How do -you- DM your events?

Rolls? No rolls? Small groups? Large groups? Planned or completely spontaneous? Elaborate raid warnings? Short raid warnings? No raid warnings? DiceMaster, markers, toys, custom art, or maybe nothing at all?

As a person who loves to experiment (and is still trying to find her One True Method) I find the subject of DMing to be incredibly interesting, especially given the wide variety of methods different groups use. How does your team handle DMing? What systems or mechanics do you have in place? Is there something you would like to improve (or perhaps remove) when it comes to your current methods?

Let’s talk about the more “behind the scenes” aspects of roleplay! :face_with_monocle:

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Oooh, I’m actually interested in seeing this thread, hope it’ll get a good discussion going!

For me, whenever I either give feedback or plan and DM events myself, the most important thing is to allow the characters to shine. The worst thing a DM can do is force rolls where they shouldn’t be and make a player say “But my character would never fail at that”.
Now, the one exception for this is combat, of course, you can roll low and not hit any enemies. It’s up to you to make a believable emote for what your character is doing. If you’re salty about your low roll and emote your character being incompetent, that’s solely your fault, not the DM’s.

But, say, a character is throwing a dagger at an unmoving target. The DM makes the player roll, for some reason, despite the character having previously been established as competent at throwing daggers. This, in my opinion is a mistake.

Rolls are great, for as long as they represent luck, and not the skill of the character.
Once we get that down, we can move on to actually planning events. For me, I prefer planning only loosely and making very few notes. I don’t plan combat at all, for example, because I never really know how many people show up to my event (it’s a bit of a wild card in who can and cannot attend) and I’m fast thinking enough to be able to tweak numbers according to how well people do and how many attend.

If I see them ploughing through everything effortlessly (when that’s not supposed to happen), I just make the enemies hit a bit harder and take more damage before going down, or even get them reinforcements if the plot allows for it.

I also don’t overly plan out the plot and only write opening dialogues.
Of course, I have an idea on what’s supposed to go down and check out locations beforehand, but I always want to let the players feel like they can influence it. If they want to spare a hostile NPC after defeating them or talk their way through a group of enemies, I give them the opportunity to do that.

I’ve never liked any of those events that where the DM is just looking to tell a story and you either have to get insanely high rolls to try influencing it or you were just told OOCly that you cannot do what you were about to do.

I never tell my players “you can’t do that.” Ever. If their characters are going to do that, then they should do that.
I might punish them hard for it, granted, if they do something stupid, but I’m also usually willing to skip entire sections if they’re smart and find a way to bypass them. So it balances out nicely.

EDIT:
Typos.
Also, another good example for a DM’s poor judgement about asking for rolls is spellcasters. Say, you’re playing a demonologist and your character has previously been very well established to be a skilled summoner. The likelihood of them failing at summoning a demon which they regularly do is quite frankly, null. But the DM makes them roll for it anyway and they roll low. How does that happen then? As I’ve previously stated, that’s a roll determining character skill instead of player luck.
Which I find to be poor DMing.

Also, another good example would be basic actions, such as climbing up a cliffside. It’s okay if people want to make personal rolls for it, because their characters aren’t skilled rock climbers, but if there’s a rogue, hunter, monk, demon hunter or whatever other character that’s supposed to be agile and would perform the action effortlessly, then they should not, under any circimstances roll.
Although this example can be bypassed by just making a minor rockslide and making them roll for dodging rocks, the general point is still there, I think.

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Something tells me you’re speaking of one very particular situation here.

That sounds very constructive, and delightfully creatively free :grinning:

I just want to add -

and this is just the input of a geeky footman, I’ve never DMed as much as a fishing trip -

I agree that rolling in some circunstances makes little sense, for instance if an experienced healer is trying to heal an ally.

However, I also find it strangely entertaining to (figure out how I should) believably emote the action of a failed roll :grinning:

It does require some creativity, but then again, so does RP in general, :slightly_smiling_face: and I assume not all DMs were created equal;

maybe some need stricter frames in their story, and I

(can only speak for myself, but I, for one)

am definitely willing to,

perhaps somewhat character-embarrassingly,

fail surprisingly at something - if the alternative would be that some DMs refrain from running their events, feeling that they are too restrictive.

Once again a long answer that doesn’t say much…

I suppose DMs & their minions together, through communication, should paint that canvas.

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I don’t like rolls as a roleplayer. Or to say, I don’t like rollplay. I would never determine the outcome of an emote or an action based solely on a roll - if a character is, by their background, capable of doing something, then they should be able to. Determine the outcome more on their actions, their reactions and emotes, not a roll. Reward creativity, detail and enthusiasm.

That’s mostly where I come from with my DMing. I try to keep myself to three principles for all my events:

Never have a single roll. Always reward emotes over RNG.

Tailor the event to address each character as an individual, unique participant.

Try and create outcomes and results from the event that allow conceptual changes to the core of participating characters, thus fostering development.

The first I explained already. The second; this is the main reason I prefer smaller groups. I really don’t like events where a character is “one from the many in the line” and their emotes are pretty much raid-boss hack and slash.

Instead, I want to involve each attending character in their own unique way. This is mostly done through my “investigation” events where I send whisper-emotes to each player; clues revealed related to the event that would only logically be discovered by the specific character. EG, a Rangari will see footprints and trails, an arcanist will sense a tingle of arcane disturbance or the taint of fel. Often I try and make these “vital” to the event, or “very helpful” to resolving puzzles.

The last; this is something I also miss from a lot of events. Roleplay, to me, is about character development. Seeing a character or group of characters go from A to B, then C, then D and so on. See prejudices shattered, friendships broken, betrayals, confrontation, etc. I like posing characters with challenges that go against their core beliefs; puzzles to which the solution is an enemy. Very recently, we had a bunch of Lightforged follow a void elf who was tracking Ethereal thieves through a void rift - though a vital ally, for the thieves stole an important artifact.

Feel free to ask any questions, I’ll try and answer and contribute to the discussion. An interesting thread.

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It’s an example. I made two more in the edit. All three of thosse actually happened at one time or the other and I haven’t agreed with them.

You can make your character fail at something or get into an embarassing situation by your own choice too. You don’t need to roll for that in my opinion.
I prefer giving players freedom to decide what their characters can and cannot do.
It’s putting a lot of trust in the players to execute their characters’ flaws as well as their strengths, yes, but if you’ve got a regular “audience”, I don’t think that should be a problem.

I’m not discounting the effectiveness of rolls in events, but roll heavy DMing is often not as satisfying as a well told story with plenty of development to be had for characters. There should be a balance between the two. Make your players roll just enough to be having fun with RNG (because yes, RNG is fun in the right quantities) without it compromising the characters’ traits and skills.

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Roleplaying to me is cooperative storytelling and DMing events are to be treated as such with each character acting upon the world they inhabit. The conditions differ based on the group and ideas, making necessity of being attentive to the needs and reactions of your group.

Communication is key so that people aren’t forced into bad situations that they didn’t choose to bring on themselves and it takes a degree of social intelligence to keep track of these cues. A DM is a storyteller and a guide, not a tyrant and so we move forward together to craft our tales.

Rolls are a different subject altogether as it fundamentally alters the active exchanges we’d be accustomed to into a more old timey turn based process that everyone needs to be in on and the conditions of it need to be solidly established beforehand. Otherwise you get the situations mentioned prior with experts in their craft bungling what they’ve done all their lives.

There’s a considerable difference between Friedrich Feltooth failing to summon his imp for the first time in 6048 because he rolled below 12 and him having to roll because it’s his first real try at bringing forth a doomguard in the midst of a heated battle with stress, pressure and the pain of several wounds fraying at his concentration. Consent to conditions is the first step, then the conditions can be established and if appropriate, rolls can be used as a system to determine success.

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