9 things D&D players wish DMs did

Comments · 1.2K

• GI

  @GinnyDi · 4 years ago · pinned

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• NE

  @nexus1g · 4 years ago

  When it comes to railroading/allowing to flounder fruitlessly, remember, only you as the DM knows where that clue was hidden. If the party is lost, you can absolutely make it look like the ever-important clue was in this one place the whole time and you didn&apos;t just change things in order to help them out.

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• RE

  @Reoh0z · 4 years ago

  Me leaving letters on the study table for the players to find.<br>Me mentioning the letters multiple times during investigations of the area.<br><br>...<br>The players literally setting the building on fire and walking away without reading the letters.

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• CC

  @cchapa7470 · 4 years ago

  Long before &quot;safety tools&quot; was a common thing (we&apos;re talking 90&apos;s ish) I had &quot;....aaand Fade to Black.&quot;<br>In Session Zero, I informed players that if ever they were uncomfortable with a scene they could end it immediately with &quot;aaand Fade to Black.&quot; At that point everyone stopped immediately, no questions, and took a 15 minute break. If it wasn&apos;t obvious, I pulled them aside and we discussed, in as far as they were comfortable, what aspect upset them. Where initially I did this to better understand what to avoid in the future, it inadvertently worked as a check system as well (I had three a-hole players try to abuse this by &quot;fading&quot; RP cause they were bored and the attention wasn&apos;t on them.)<br>Over the years my Session 0s and tools evolved (questionnaires and such) but I always kept &quot;...aaand Fade to Black&quot;.<br>And for those wondering why I keep writing it like that instead of just abbreviating FtB, I&apos;ve tried it without the &quot;...aaand&quot;. There&apos;s something about that sound that overpowers all &nbsp;dialog, breaks verisimilitude, draws everyone&apos;s attention to the player&apos;s distress, and sometimes adds just the right amount of levity to break the tension of a scene gracefully for everyone. It&apos;s been used many times over the years (fewer as I&apos;ve gotten better at DMing) but I can&apos;t tell you how valuable having a simple, quick &quot;Stop&quot; button has been for my players.

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• EG

  @egsauce2911 · 4 years ago

  There was a shocking number of people who wanted their DMs to provide food during a session. That’s ghastly. The DM is providing the whole ass world you play in for hours on end, players should feed each other AND the DM. C’mon, guys, some care &amp; etiquette please.

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• CH

  @ChknPotPythagoras · 4 years ago

  &quot;Surprise! It&apos;s general data!&quot;<br><br>As a Data Reporting Analyst, I will definitely be using this. 😂

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• BR

  @brentage5000 · 4 years ago

  I missed saying this on Twitter, but....session zero. That&apos;s kinda like the first point, but (just speaking for me) when you&apos;re a person that hasn&apos;t played in a fair few years or are just starting with a new group, session zeros for both group and player could be really good to have.

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• AL

  @AliceRogers · 4 years ago

  I think it&apos;s important to note that common requests are theming and guidance. There&apos;s so much rhetoric out there against railroading, which I get, but at the end of the day (at least for me), I&apos;d much rather go through a slightly more linear adventure than an adventure that I feel like I&apos;m floundering in.

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• MA

  @mathmusicandlooks · 4 years ago

  Great video!<br>Personal note on the “rule of three.” It’s also a perfectly valid strategy to pose your party with a problem that you haven’t worked out solutions for yourself. Don’t make it an impossible problem, but allow them to come up with ideas, plan, investigate, ask questions, and see how their plan comes to fruition. Discovering TOGETHER what will happen is one of my favorite things about d&amp;d.

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• NA

  @NaerenVastir · 4 years ago

  That silence part i find interesting. as a DM, i feel best when i&apos;m not speaking at all, or if anything, just saying what the reaction is to what the characters are doing. when you get your characters talking amongst each other for like 20 min straight with little to no input from you... to me that means you&apos;re doing it right.

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• MI

  @MinnehahaSybyl · 4 years ago

  With regard to the &quot;Guide us&quot; feedback: I use NPCs as the gamekeepers in an Escape Room. No one WANTS to ask the person running the escape room for a hint, but if you&apos;re not having fun anymore you&apos;ve got to. NPCs should be prepared to give obvious hints. I mostly get this from a brilliant player of mine who will frequently grab an NPC, point at the party&apos;s plan and ask &quot;Is there anything obvious we&apos;re missing here?&quot; 9 times out of 10 they get an &quot;I don&apos;t know, seems good to me.&quot; but that one time was super useful.<br><br>Another player does the even more helpful NPC interaction. &quot;Hey, is this a good idea? Are we biting off more than we can chew? Should we NOT fight this guy?&quot; I know a lot of people will call it metagaming, but I can always have the NPC be unhelpful if I think they don&apos;t need to ask.

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• SH

  @ShandorDavies · 4 years ago

  One of the best campaigns my DM did was tell us before the game started that we were imprisoned. We could be criminals or wrongly accused, just had to be a prisoner.<br><br>Then he started the campaign and we were shipwrecked from a prison ship, banding together out of necessity to survive in a strange new land.<br><br>We all bonded pretty fast over our mutual desire to get back to where we came from.

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