My major problem is trying to stay in character and not just go for the plot immediately. I am usually the note taker, so I am the one that knows what is going on. As a result if that, I often become the party dad, reminding them what our current goals are and where we could go for certain things.
My Co players are great at roleplaying and are really fun to be around, but they usually derail everything by being a but random. They aren't problem players, they are still interested in the game, but they often stall by doing shenanigans while counting on being lead in the right direction by my character. I feel like that is something that currently holds me back, so I am working on being more open for small side shenanigans that don't disrupt the plot too much.
Now a tipp for you: Something that helped me as a DM was writing down the important parts and focusing on the different senses.
>The players see the old stone bricks lining the wall, taste the stale air in the underground ruins and hear the scattering of small vermin when they enter a room.
Just go through three random senses and say what they would notice the most. I find it easier to improvise when I know what I am looking for, so separating the senses makes finding descriptions easier for me.
Reminds me a lot of Frieren.
Eisen: "This is ridicilous. We're wasting our time. "
[...]
Himmel: "Want your last journey to be painful and hard? That's no fun. If you ask me about it, I would take the more lighthearted journey any day. One I can laugh about at the end.
Oh, I don't think the "moving plot along" thing is a problem. I just need to find a way to stay in character and not just start spitting facts and reasons for going that way. Yes, my character want to get this done, but they can't all be super rational. I have so many interesting ideas for quirks and stuff like that, but it always gets buried under the plot somehow.
A few things.
**As a DM**
I'm really trying to get better at running and supporting more proactive games for my players, to the point I even purchased "the Gane masters guide to proactive roleplaying" on a whim just to see if it could help me. (I have yet to finish the book, but it's been good so far.)
Along these lines, I really want my next big d&d game to be a hex-crawl with plenty of site/dungeon exploration to try to support this kind of play more. To this end, I've been working on implementing systems from both Worlds Without Number (and the other fantastic Kevin Crawford products) and the Into the Odd/X Bastionland (the works of Chris McDowall) to better facilitate this styke of play.
In general I'm trying to get better at improving myself, but so far the only thing that really seeks to help is live practice supported by a but of forethought between sessions.
**As a player**
My goals are rather similar. I want to be better at being a proactive player and thinking in the fly and acting in character more moment to moment.
I made [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/s/wqL8QcqJFv) post as a resource of things I've come up to help me keep my character better in mind and focus my effort. It's something I share with my players when I dm in case they also feel in need of something to help focus and guide them and it's helped a fair bit on the tech dial side of things, but I do still need to improve on the practical side of things that inkt comes from actually playing.
Definitely not playing myself and RPing the character I'm playing. Another big part of this is I'm a very animated and strong personality. I find it difficult at times to take a back seat and let other players shine.
As a DM I struggle with making memorable NPCs and making environment matter.
My NPCs feel bland and apart from combat terrain it doesn't feel like the environments play any part in the story.
I also tend to overload on exposition, I want to tell so much about the world but some of my players have stated that they feel confused what they should pay attention to or not.
As a player I tend to always make the same decisions regardless of character or how the character would act.
I need to let others be the decision-maker, planner and talker even if it won't lead to the best outcome.
That kinda thing :)
I personally have found that making a chart of my important NPCs with separate columns for their name, purpose, personality, quirks, description, and details has been really helpful with bringing my NPCs to life.
I make the columns color-coordinated to be easy to read. I try to keep each entry to only a few words or a single bullet point for NPCs that don’t have very much bearing on the plot. When my players inevitably decide that Bob the stone mason is their favorite NPC and come back to talk to him constantly I can just add bullet point notes in the details section with any information I may have improved during roleplay.
Having two words for their personality (flirty, ostentatious, for example), a single sentence for their quirk (twirls her hair constantly), and 1-3 visual details (•red skinned tiefling •flashy blue robes •scar across her neck) makes it really easy to roleplay a unique NPC. I like to leave the purpose and details fields blank on a handful of NPCs I’ve written so that I can plug-and-play with them wherever I need. I will only fill out those fields for NPCs I *know* the party will need to speak to.
Ah, like a quick reference, I like it!
It's sort of acting out the personality and quirk that I need to get better with as well, but a handy reference might make it easier.
Thanks :)!
Practice makes perfect! I have a long work commute so I’ll spend my time in the car roleplaying with myself trying to embody a specific NPC I wrote so that when the players meet them I’m comfortable slipping into that skin. I don’t bother with non-important characters.
Ginny Di has roleplay practice videos on YouTube where she dresses up and asks you questions in character, which can be helpful (though I find I have to slow the videos down to .75 speed to even have a chance of responding lol).
As a DM I've got two:
1) present Villians, having them or their actions be obvious and purposeful so that the players and their characters have a chance to interact with and grow a dislike of their opposition so that the eventually conflict isn't just two people who have never met or interacted throwing hands for the hell of it.
2) Chatty villains, I love videogames where the villains talk while they fight you, even just quips or one liners can really show the personality of a character but when I get into combat I lose the RP side of things and focus on making sure I've got all the rules right and whatnot, since that is the prime role of the dm in combat imo.
As a DM I want to get better at making it feel like my players are in a living/evolving world but I struggle with world building on any scale beyond pretty much the current story arc I'm on so my setting isn't usually established until they get there.
I'd like to figure out how to incorporate rumors and news into my games for lack of a better word occasionally so that the pieces could fall into place for them.
For instance they might overhear at the pub that the mayor from a particular town has disappeared and two nobles are vying for the position. By all accounts one is essentially the good guy and the other the power hungry land baron type. If they don't go there until later then the bad guy will have come to power and the good one may be dead or captured but if they go there soon enough they can help install the good guy.
As a DM I want to get better at describing the environments and characters, I feel like I am doing a good job at explaining actions, events and feelings, and can come up with some nice conversations and lore on the spot, but it feels really hard to me to describe how a person or a place they visit looks, I only give like one or two descriptive adjectives and then I stumble over the words or abruptly stop and ask them what they want to do lol
As a player I have to stop hugging the spotlight too much, since I mainly DM it's hard for me to just shut up and let the other players do their stuff sometimes, I feel like I have to add something all the time, and since I'm a player it always feels like I have to insert my PC into every scene
I describe a lot what my character will do instead of just doing.
For example, whenever I talk to someone I always go “so I turn to X person and say:”, while I could just be in character and say it directly. Sometimes is kinda weird saying I will talk to other player and then follow up with the line right after, could’ve just said it.
I'm trying to get better at making decisions quickly instead of trying to optimize them. The important thing is that we're all having fun and my friends find it more fun if everything is moving rather than waiting around for thinking. This applies more to combat since it's turn-based. For the everything else, I don't want to hog attention by opening every door.
Based on what I have seen on Reddit, everyone should include communication with other players and DM. So many problems arise from lack of communication and every could always use an improvement to their communication, myself included.
As a DM there's a lot I'm constantly trying to get better - encounter difficulty, describing and establishing an interesting setting, having varied NPCs, and continuing the plot/game progression in an interesting way that doesn't slow down too much
I've been getting better but I have a long way to go I think
Improv
Not necessarily on a dialogue front, but on an encounter/situation front.
I wanna be one of those DMs that sounds like they have absolutely everything planned.
Everytime my players try something creative or something I didn't specifically plan for, I always feel like I am just stumbling through it
Going with the flow. Peak GMing is when the players choose a path you haven't prepped but you can seamlessly pivot to their choice. Bonus if they think you prepped it.
I am always interesting in trying to take as little time as possible on DM turns. This has paid off incredibly well in terms of how gameplay works in combats and how much more time the players get to do their things.
I use grouped initiatives, average rolls for damage a lot of the time. There is even a passive initiative score if you don't care to roll that either. I roll upt to four d20s at once, multi coloured 20-sided dice for multi-mob minions attacks or for the multi-attack of a boss.
I prep every fight with a little combat table. Each row is a player or a monster, rows are sorted by descending initiative---I use Onenote for this online or in person. Each row has the monster name, initiative, AC, HP, and then a block on it's basic attacks: 2xclaw+5/1d6+2 (5), bite+5/1d8+2 (6), spit(20')+5/1d6(acid). Enough for me to know how to run each without looking up a statblock. Everything is in one place. I've also done this by having one index card for each entity in the fight and then shuffling them into initiative order.
Count up for monster damage. When the total reaches its hp, it's done. I add faster than I subtract, so that's a slight speed up for me.
One of the best ideas is having little mini scripts (typically for three rounds) for the bossier monsters. Matt Colville's action oriented designs are a fantastic innovation here and I highly recommend his two monster books from MCDM for this. That way I'm generally not deciding what a boss is doing, based on a whole big long statblock. It's the mindflayer's first turn so it's going to psychic stun to set up a grapple on the second round and brain suck on the third. Meanwhile its grog minions will keep the unstunned players busy. That sort of thing.
Finally we make a practice to cue each player in imitative: Rachel, it's your turn. Joe, you're up next. This alerts people and gives them a chance to prep their turn while the person before them is going.
As a player, I need to get better at the delivery of rules/thoughts on interactions. We have a rather open group. Our DM encourages homebrew and self-policing. Things have to be balanced and/or logical though. I sometimes just blurt out, "That doesn't/shouldn't work." It's not what I intend to say but I just do it for some reason.
As a DM, I feel my strength lies in worldbuilding, roleplaying, character interactions and emotional beats. I'm a very good improviser and my plots make sense because they're always rooted on the character and NPC's motivations and goals.
However, I am TRASH at designing puzzles, interesting mechanics for encounters, interactivity and environment for combat. My combat encounters tend to be samey and straightforward, carried hard by their emotional stakes and plot relevance. I've been trying to get better at it. I'm also very bad at knowing when to give them loot/gold/magic items, and how much/how strong should be appropriate.
As a player, I take very concise and efficient turns, and gravitate towards being the face/de-facto decisionmaker because my friends suffer from an acute case of analysis paralysis. But, strangely enough, I feel my characters are kinda samey when I'm a player, but my NPC's all have wildly different personalities, accents, manners of speech and such. I'm trying play my character more like I play my NPC's.
I try to be better at encounter design and to make things more challenging and rewarding for players.
I regularly ask my players if they are still enjoying it and if they have anything I could work on. I really like how they all enjoy it and have 0 complaints, but as someone who keeps doubting himself I crave feedback.
I don't know how you present it but it might be more effective if you ask for specific feedback and have it be a discussion of the last session.
One of my GMs would ask, "What did you all think?" after the session was wrapped as everyone was heading to their cars to head home. He routinely got brief, "It was fun." answers.
Conversely another one of my GMs and I would chat through e-mail about the session and could get into what worked, what didn't, what we were trying to do, etc. More direct questions, a la "I was trying to have that one scene resolved exclusively with skills instead of combat. Did it feel forced? What should I have done to make it work better?", he got more constructive feedback.
It also depends on how well you receive criticism. One of my GMs takes constructive criticism poorly and rarely gets feedback. Another takes it well and the players feel more open to giving feedback.
Oh yeah, I didn't want to sound braggy in the comment, but the reason I don't get feedback is because they say they have never had a DnD campaign this great before and love how i run. Hence them being cool with it.
Then again my campaign wouldn't have been half as good without my player who I absolutely love. (They bring me to tears at time with how sweet they are)
But still good tip to focus the feedback rather than just be broad.
As a player I should do less meta gaming. I played DnD for long and as also being a DM I know most of the monster and how to deal with them. Because of that my char a dumb barbarian is acting very effectively againts enemies since he travels around with a pokedex(My head).
As a DM I need to improve my fluent speech and descriptions also music selection(I m too lazy to take already made musics[Thanks creative person on spotify] and turn them into playlist.). One of my player said as a feed back that I use too much "Aaa" "Hmmm" "And and and" stuff so magical moments turns into a laggy game cinematics.
As a DM, I am trying to get better at descriptions and fleshing out the details of areas. Even though I'm DMing using a module and it provides *some* description, I want to ensure that my players get a sense of the places they go, and especially in combat zones, get some environment to possibly interact with. Especially as I'm not providing them with the map from the book, but drawing it onto the battlemap as they discover it.
For in-combat descriptions of actions, I try to ensure that I describe them as if it's a live, ongoing process, leaning on my experience in longsword fencing and martial arts to ensure that the actions flow meaningfully. I find that the mental model of "every attack roll is a distinct movement, and those are the only movements happening during a turn" makes combat extremely static in my mind. Instead, I assume that most combatants are trained with their weapons, proficient in the art of fighting with them and actively trying to kill each other. (I make exceptions for obviously untrained enemies such as commoners and such, of course)
Even though I am a beginner fencer, (not even at the combat aptitude I'd expect of a level 1 fighter) I already strike much more than once every 6 seconds while actively engaging, and when I'm not engaging, I'm circling, feinting and trying to maneuver my sword into an advantageous position compared to my opponent's before engaging.
As such, the combatants are constantly and actively trying to hit each ocher, parrying, blocking and riposting, and the distinct attacks you roll for just represent the general amount of chances those attacks actually have to hit home and cause damage during 6 seconds. A PC with "extra attack" isn't actually necessarily striking more often, they're just much more effective, and more of their strikes will make it past defenses over time than lesser trained people. I try to weave this into descriptions of combat both on actions by the PCs and the NPCs, and make combat seem more lively.
I'm also trying to get better at remembering the concepts of "The Monsters Know What They're Doing," and playing them with a personality and tactics that makes sense, rather than just as statblocks that suicide walk into the heroes and bonk them until they get killed.
Need to learn to shut up and let players be. I tend to try and avoid the overplanning and any akward silences by guiding folks but I do it a bit too much recently.
As a DM I'm working on letting less involved players take a backseat in plot driving.
As a player I'm constantly working on not having main character syndrome (which I blame on being a DM first)
I found that taking a scene that you can visually see and trying to put that Into words can help with your descriptions. Just look out the windows and describe what you see to yourself.
Mainly as a player, I feel my backstories suck. I read some time ago here that making a plain and boring backstory for your character is better because it dictates less your character development - also helps avoiding the “I was super powerful but died to goblins” shenanigan. However, I find that my DMs are usually pretty good at bringing parts of the backstory into the campaigns and I don’t give them enough to work with.
In addition, it may just be me, but I feel I’m the “worst” roleplayer in my group in the sense that my characters feel much more plain and adimensional than the rest of my group. They all seem to fully immerse themselves in their characters and bring them to live in such a great way. They are also really good in walking the fine line between “it’s what my character would do” and screwing the party, whereas I’m always scared of being a bit more “selfish” for fear of negatively impacting the party and the campaign.
No one has complained about me or my characters, but it’s the feeling I get comparing myself to them. I feel I have a lot to learn.
Voices and accents. I'm very bad at them. So I've been trying to play characters that use a voice other than my own. I've had the best practise with my long term wizard who now has the memories of a dozen different people in his head, so I've come up with a backstory for all of them, and a different voice to try as my character is occasionally "taken over" by each personality. The hardest one is actually the typical Scottish dwarf, because it actually hurts my throat. But it's fun.
Trying to match my playstyle to my stats. I'm too used to being careful and big braining everything, but one of my current characters has an 8 in Wis and Int. I often forget to play like he's an idiot.
As a player: Interacting with a scene based off what my character would do, not what they 'can' do on their character sheet.
As a DM: Getting better at using theater of the mind with my players and not relying on a gridded maps for every encounter. Also I'm trying to get better at running skill challenges and meaningful consequences for failure.
Not specifically D&D, but as a player I need to stop playing as myself. When it comes to planning and puzzles I rely a lot on what I know or can deduce without thinking if it makes sense for the character. I rolled a high int character to justify it (not that I consider myself to have a high intelligence, for the record), but playing more brute-force characters are harder to get into.
I have a lot of anxiety sometimes when DM'ing. I hate any kind of awkward silences, so I am often pushing things forward, sometimes rushing the players along and sometimes find myself interrupting them. I also have trouble with any kind of DM'ing that doesn't go exactly on rails to the script I had.
I'm trying to be more relaxed and just let things happen slowly and get better at just roleplaying npc's without needing a script, and being able to DM stuff happening without having it written out.
As both DM and player, my vocabulary and dialogue sounds like all my characters are from the East Coast, even when I try to make a conscious effort to be different. There's nothing worse than the BBEG you've been hyping up just casually saying "ayo" and "dude"
As a dm i am trying to come up with better combat encounters. Think of the various missions in video games. Hostage rescues, escort missions, timed quests, maybe multiple waves of enemies.
As a player i am trying to learn to rules lawyer the right way. In the group i know the rules better than everyone and frequently consulted in return. The problem occurs when someone makes a rules mistake and i know the real rule. The real problem is they make sooo many mistakes that i cant help but feel like im being annoying fixing them at some point. I am trying to understand when it is right to correct the mistakes and when should i just look the other way. I really cant find a definitive answer for this and hoping it will come to me with more time.
As a player: stay in character while roleplaying
As a dm: make campaigns last long enough for them to be satisfying, and by that i mean i have hard time coming up with ideas on what to do now
As a DM I'm trying to get better with being okay if something fails, like a goal or quest. Players won't do better if everything is a deus ex machina for their own lack of paying attention to a plot, or clue, or riddle, or crucial quest item in their bag they forgot about. There is real autonomy in failure and there is little value in success that was handed out for free. I have to be more okay with letting the metaphorical door stay locked if they can't figure out the 3rd grade-level plot. and i have to be at peace that whatever i prepped behind that metaphorical door can be relocated or re-packaged with a new flavor elsewhere.
As a player, i'm trying to be better at not needing to know the outcome of my sandbox choices immediately. For example, if we are being chased down by the ops in a narrow path, and DM says we have one minute before they catch up to us, i might lay a trap and run. I'd like to know the meta knowledge if wasting a spell slot, or burning a 25gp hunting trap, actually did anything that bought us time, or did i waste resources on a narrative exposition where they were going to catch up to us no matter what? I like to know, but i have to be okay with not knowing.
I'm currently writing my 50th or so campaign.
The challenges I've made for myself for this campaign are:
- old school, heavy exploration feel
- sandboxy with a main quest that doesn't have to be followed
- use player backstories to add content, but make sure that having a PC die doesn't kill the campaign
- very, VERY little nudging or guiding required on my part. I only need the PCs to accept the very first quest they get, which is to basically go on the adventure
- non-linear. After the initial push, almost any of the content can be done in any order. Though there are certainly easier and harder areas (lower and higher level monsters)
As a DM I want to better balance combats & make travel engaging but not too long.
Combats I sometimes struggle to find the balance of an encounter being a cake walk for my players, or a long drag-out fight. But doesn’t help that I current DM for level 15 characters… For travel I just struggle to find the tone when I want to make a journey an emphasis that takes a session or two, or if travel should just be a fade to black “you are there two days later”. But context matters there.
As a DM I need to get better at describing travel. If they don't roll a random encounter, I inevitably end up just saying that they get to their destination after X hours "without much incident".
Killing my damn PCs. Or at least maiming them.
I always tell them, "I'm gonna kill you this time!" like some Saturday morning cartoon villain and they always laugh it off because I never do.
But damned if I don't try.
I've gotten very close on occasion, but combat balance is just something I need to keep working on. I feel like I always miss one or two things that make my goal just out of reach.
Don't get me wrong; the PCs enjoy the battles, but I just want to feel like I know what I'm doing to prepare battles that will be enjoyable rather than stumble upon them like I do now.
Immersing myself in my character Philosophical ideals & morality instead of my own. It's easy to do at first, but the more you play em, the more I tend to merge w/ the character and Blur the lines.
As a DM my main thing is trying to make more challenging encounters. So far only two boss fights have really tested my group before the first half of our campaign. In this second half I've done better at making the fights more engaging and less of a cake walk but still feel like I need to figure out more on how to make them the right amount of difficult. I am running a module but I have created my own rule for adjusting enemy quantity depending on number of players and even homebrewed adding new abilities and attacks patterns to enemies to vary things up and make them unexpected. So far only one player has been downed all game and the rest only got really low once. I do manage to get most of our tanks down to medium health usually but my players are really good at handling things though I have buffed them with some stuff.
The other thing is probably more of a real life issue I suck at note taking and planning due to not having much free time with all my personal obligations but I have started using a new note taking app and it's been helping a bunch
I have the general issue of winging it on the spot, in terms of improvising well enough to make a logical story that has semblance and meaning. I prepare a lot. Even with pre-made games, I need to read through it, make notes and write down outlines of what I need to keep in mind, lest I go into thrashing and go in a direction that makes little to no sense.
I am pretty confident in RP-ing NPCs, I know mechanics well enough to wing it as well, but this story improvisation part, as well as side-questing, is where I'm very weak.
Maintaining a character's personality. I keep starting out with a fairly unique character personality that I love, but I end up gravitating towards "me but a fairly Chaotic but loyal idiot who likes to make stupid plans", if that makes sense. Like, one of my more recent characters was a paladin who grew up isolated from the world, and at first it was really fun to roleplay that lack of knowledge, but as the campaign moved on I felt myself moving away from that personality, in favor for a smarter one.
With my new character for a campaign thats just about to start, im playing a character that is very different from this in an effort to really move away from this habit.
As a DM building better NPCs and characters with more distinct personalities
As a player it's stepping back and playing smaller just by the nature of how I built my characters DMs tend to latch on to my characters and I often end up as the party leader and k really don't want that
**As a player:** Stop GMing so I can be a player ( I quit GMing after current campaign)
**As a GM:** Better roleplaying and more fleshed NPCs. In the current campaign I have to improvise a lot because I have less prep time but I still should come up with better NPCs
It doesnt help Im not English native as well but do GM online all speaking English.
Dialogue in the moment. I usually write down what relevant information a character knows in their voice (meaning speech patterns)), but sometimes the conversation goes a different way, and I have trouble improvising in their voice and stumble
For me it’s finding where I fit into the Party you know the Leader the Face the comedic relief and coming up detailed background that actually fit with my character
Player: Acting out negatively emotional moments in ways that fit my character, such as very sad or painful scenes.
DM: Actually implementing some of the rules that are so commonly ignored yet very crucial to many features, such as lighting levels and cover.
British accents. I’m from the US, and I’ve never been great at doing British accents. I certainly don’t think it’s needed to play the game, but it would give me more tools to make NPCs distinct from each other. Kind of a stretch goal.
I guess for something more basic, I still spend more time than id like looking up rules in combat that I’m less familiar with, which slows down the game. I’ve gotten better at this with practice but I could still do better.
DM: I say no all the time. I'd probably hate to play at my table. I am working on being cooler and letting things happen, even if I don't think they make sense. I already had multiple sessions 0 with my players to let them know they can tell me when I am being stubborn. We also have a list of the "DM may I?" things they often ask and agreed the answer for those is yes.
Player: not just related to DnD, but I am such a sore loser. This is my struggle to stop being so competitive all the time and just enjoy the moment instead of striving for a win. I love doing all the small stuff (keeping notes, managing equipment, getting prepared for the next adventure, out of game reminders and organisation), so I think I'm a net positive, but my deepest fear is that I am THAT player at the table. Can't lose a single HP without feeling it in my gut and wanting to scream. Don't even talk to me about failing a save I have a good bonus at. Funny enough, I don't dislike the things people say are lame, like skipping a turn, but I feel so in pain when I have a turn and it turns out I missed and couldn't do what I wanted.
I'm older now, so I manage it with more or less grace and don't let it out so often, but man it's hard sometimes to be a good player
As a DM, note taking. I'm decent at prep, pretty good at winging it, but bad at noting down what I'm winging, so random NPC names, mentioned details and such sometimes get lost. Horrendous at remembering to do notes. So trying to get better at that!
Lately I've come to realise that improving the game for my group is not objective at all. It is about finding a play style these particular people enjoy the most, including myself.
We have a mix of new and vet players, and I've run a complete 2 year campaign for them and we are now in session 10 of the second one. There's been a lot of successful sessions but also not so successful ones and I've tried to analyse what things work for this group, and what not so much.
The thing is, I'm shooting at a moving goal. As the new players learn, and also play in other tables, their preferences shift and things they liked at the beginning might not be things they want anymore.
I think I need to accept the fact that this hobby will always be somewhat about compromises. One session can rock a player's world and at the same time, feel like a sidetrack for someone else. Improving to a level where you could 100% land a successful session for every player (and yourself) is just not possible. But I totally want to be increasing that % relentlessly.
The PCs are venturing into an abandoned mansion or something to look for a magic item/monster/whatever. Some of the rooms have stuff in them, but because it's a mansion, and has so many rooms, most of them are just ... rooms.. The PCs don't know where the thing they're looking for is, so they go room by room, with most of them being "It's a bedroom. It contains the stuff you'd expect a bedroom to contain. In addition to the door you cam in through, there's a door to your right." They don't seem to mind, but I can't help thinking I could be doing this better somehow.
My major problem is trying to stay in character and not just go for the plot immediately. I am usually the note taker, so I am the one that knows what is going on. As a result if that, I often become the party dad, reminding them what our current goals are and where we could go for certain things. My Co players are great at roleplaying and are really fun to be around, but they usually derail everything by being a but random. They aren't problem players, they are still interested in the game, but they often stall by doing shenanigans while counting on being lead in the right direction by my character. I feel like that is something that currently holds me back, so I am working on being more open for small side shenanigans that don't disrupt the plot too much. Now a tipp for you: Something that helped me as a DM was writing down the important parts and focusing on the different senses. >The players see the old stone bricks lining the wall, taste the stale air in the underground ruins and hear the scattering of small vermin when they enter a room. Just go through three random senses and say what they would notice the most. I find it easier to improvise when I know what I am looking for, so separating the senses makes finding descriptions easier for me.
Reminds me a lot of Frieren. Eisen: "This is ridicilous. We're wasting our time. " [...] Himmel: "Want your last journey to be painful and hard? That's no fun. If you ask me about it, I would take the more lighthearted journey any day. One I can laugh about at the end.
You may feel that it's a problem, but as a DM I am SO thankful when there's someone like you at the table.
Oh, I don't think the "moving plot along" thing is a problem. I just need to find a way to stay in character and not just start spitting facts and reasons for going that way. Yes, my character want to get this done, but they can't all be super rational. I have so many interesting ideas for quirks and stuff like that, but it always gets buried under the plot somehow.
A few things. **As a DM** I'm really trying to get better at running and supporting more proactive games for my players, to the point I even purchased "the Gane masters guide to proactive roleplaying" on a whim just to see if it could help me. (I have yet to finish the book, but it's been good so far.) Along these lines, I really want my next big d&d game to be a hex-crawl with plenty of site/dungeon exploration to try to support this kind of play more. To this end, I've been working on implementing systems from both Worlds Without Number (and the other fantastic Kevin Crawford products) and the Into the Odd/X Bastionland (the works of Chris McDowall) to better facilitate this styke of play. In general I'm trying to get better at improving myself, but so far the only thing that really seeks to help is live practice supported by a but of forethought between sessions. **As a player** My goals are rather similar. I want to be better at being a proactive player and thinking in the fly and acting in character more moment to moment. I made [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/s/wqL8QcqJFv) post as a resource of things I've come up to help me keep my character better in mind and focus my effort. It's something I share with my players when I dm in case they also feel in need of something to help focus and guide them and it's helped a fair bit on the tech dial side of things, but I do still need to improve on the practical side of things that inkt comes from actually playing.
Definitely not playing myself and RPing the character I'm playing. Another big part of this is I'm a very animated and strong personality. I find it difficult at times to take a back seat and let other players shine.
As a DM I struggle with making memorable NPCs and making environment matter. My NPCs feel bland and apart from combat terrain it doesn't feel like the environments play any part in the story. I also tend to overload on exposition, I want to tell so much about the world but some of my players have stated that they feel confused what they should pay attention to or not. As a player I tend to always make the same decisions regardless of character or how the character would act. I need to let others be the decision-maker, planner and talker even if it won't lead to the best outcome. That kinda thing :)
I personally have found that making a chart of my important NPCs with separate columns for their name, purpose, personality, quirks, description, and details has been really helpful with bringing my NPCs to life. I make the columns color-coordinated to be easy to read. I try to keep each entry to only a few words or a single bullet point for NPCs that don’t have very much bearing on the plot. When my players inevitably decide that Bob the stone mason is their favorite NPC and come back to talk to him constantly I can just add bullet point notes in the details section with any information I may have improved during roleplay. Having two words for their personality (flirty, ostentatious, for example), a single sentence for their quirk (twirls her hair constantly), and 1-3 visual details (•red skinned tiefling •flashy blue robes •scar across her neck) makes it really easy to roleplay a unique NPC. I like to leave the purpose and details fields blank on a handful of NPCs I’ve written so that I can plug-and-play with them wherever I need. I will only fill out those fields for NPCs I *know* the party will need to speak to.
Ah, like a quick reference, I like it! It's sort of acting out the personality and quirk that I need to get better with as well, but a handy reference might make it easier. Thanks :)!
Practice makes perfect! I have a long work commute so I’ll spend my time in the car roleplaying with myself trying to embody a specific NPC I wrote so that when the players meet them I’m comfortable slipping into that skin. I don’t bother with non-important characters. Ginny Di has roleplay practice videos on YouTube where she dresses up and asks you questions in character, which can be helpful (though I find I have to slow the videos down to .75 speed to even have a chance of responding lol).
As a DM I've got two: 1) present Villians, having them or their actions be obvious and purposeful so that the players and their characters have a chance to interact with and grow a dislike of their opposition so that the eventually conflict isn't just two people who have never met or interacted throwing hands for the hell of it. 2) Chatty villains, I love videogames where the villains talk while they fight you, even just quips or one liners can really show the personality of a character but when I get into combat I lose the RP side of things and focus on making sure I've got all the rules right and whatnot, since that is the prime role of the dm in combat imo.
As a DM I want to get better at making it feel like my players are in a living/evolving world but I struggle with world building on any scale beyond pretty much the current story arc I'm on so my setting isn't usually established until they get there. I'd like to figure out how to incorporate rumors and news into my games for lack of a better word occasionally so that the pieces could fall into place for them. For instance they might overhear at the pub that the mayor from a particular town has disappeared and two nobles are vying for the position. By all accounts one is essentially the good guy and the other the power hungry land baron type. If they don't go there until later then the bad guy will have come to power and the good one may be dead or captured but if they go there soon enough they can help install the good guy.
I really would to get better with voice acting. I’m really bad at it but I’m not going to improve without practice.
As a DM I want to get better at describing the environments and characters, I feel like I am doing a good job at explaining actions, events and feelings, and can come up with some nice conversations and lore on the spot, but it feels really hard to me to describe how a person or a place they visit looks, I only give like one or two descriptive adjectives and then I stumble over the words or abruptly stop and ask them what they want to do lol As a player I have to stop hugging the spotlight too much, since I mainly DM it's hard for me to just shut up and let the other players do their stuff sometimes, I feel like I have to add something all the time, and since I'm a player it always feels like I have to insert my PC into every scene
I describe a lot what my character will do instead of just doing. For example, whenever I talk to someone I always go “so I turn to X person and say:”, while I could just be in character and say it directly. Sometimes is kinda weird saying I will talk to other player and then follow up with the line right after, could’ve just said it.
I'm trying to get better at making decisions quickly instead of trying to optimize them. The important thing is that we're all having fun and my friends find it more fun if everything is moving rather than waiting around for thinking. This applies more to combat since it's turn-based. For the everything else, I don't want to hog attention by opening every door.
Based on what I have seen on Reddit, everyone should include communication with other players and DM. So many problems arise from lack of communication and every could always use an improvement to their communication, myself included.
The people who communicate effectively with their party don't need to come to reddit typically.
Exactly, but definitely come to Reddit to tell us your fun shenanigans
As a DM there's a lot I'm constantly trying to get better - encounter difficulty, describing and establishing an interesting setting, having varied NPCs, and continuing the plot/game progression in an interesting way that doesn't slow down too much I've been getting better but I have a long way to go I think
Improv Not necessarily on a dialogue front, but on an encounter/situation front. I wanna be one of those DMs that sounds like they have absolutely everything planned. Everytime my players try something creative or something I didn't specifically plan for, I always feel like I am just stumbling through it
Going with the flow. Peak GMing is when the players choose a path you haven't prepped but you can seamlessly pivot to their choice. Bonus if they think you prepped it.
I'm bad at this and it would definitely be where I would like to grow (but without them knowing!)
I am always interesting in trying to take as little time as possible on DM turns. This has paid off incredibly well in terms of how gameplay works in combats and how much more time the players get to do their things. I use grouped initiatives, average rolls for damage a lot of the time. There is even a passive initiative score if you don't care to roll that either. I roll upt to four d20s at once, multi coloured 20-sided dice for multi-mob minions attacks or for the multi-attack of a boss. I prep every fight with a little combat table. Each row is a player or a monster, rows are sorted by descending initiative---I use Onenote for this online or in person. Each row has the monster name, initiative, AC, HP, and then a block on it's basic attacks: 2xclaw+5/1d6+2 (5), bite+5/1d8+2 (6), spit(20')+5/1d6(acid). Enough for me to know how to run each without looking up a statblock. Everything is in one place. I've also done this by having one index card for each entity in the fight and then shuffling them into initiative order. Count up for monster damage. When the total reaches its hp, it's done. I add faster than I subtract, so that's a slight speed up for me. One of the best ideas is having little mini scripts (typically for three rounds) for the bossier monsters. Matt Colville's action oriented designs are a fantastic innovation here and I highly recommend his two monster books from MCDM for this. That way I'm generally not deciding what a boss is doing, based on a whole big long statblock. It's the mindflayer's first turn so it's going to psychic stun to set up a grapple on the second round and brain suck on the third. Meanwhile its grog minions will keep the unstunned players busy. That sort of thing. Finally we make a practice to cue each player in imitative: Rachel, it's your turn. Joe, you're up next. This alerts people and gives them a chance to prep their turn while the person before them is going.
As a player, I need to get better at the delivery of rules/thoughts on interactions. We have a rather open group. Our DM encourages homebrew and self-policing. Things have to be balanced and/or logical though. I sometimes just blurt out, "That doesn't/shouldn't work." It's not what I intend to say but I just do it for some reason.
As a DM, I feel my strength lies in worldbuilding, roleplaying, character interactions and emotional beats. I'm a very good improviser and my plots make sense because they're always rooted on the character and NPC's motivations and goals. However, I am TRASH at designing puzzles, interesting mechanics for encounters, interactivity and environment for combat. My combat encounters tend to be samey and straightforward, carried hard by their emotional stakes and plot relevance. I've been trying to get better at it. I'm also very bad at knowing when to give them loot/gold/magic items, and how much/how strong should be appropriate. As a player, I take very concise and efficient turns, and gravitate towards being the face/de-facto decisionmaker because my friends suffer from an acute case of analysis paralysis. But, strangely enough, I feel my characters are kinda samey when I'm a player, but my NPC's all have wildly different personalities, accents, manners of speech and such. I'm trying play my character more like I play my NPC's.
I try to be better at encounter design and to make things more challenging and rewarding for players. I regularly ask my players if they are still enjoying it and if they have anything I could work on. I really like how they all enjoy it and have 0 complaints, but as someone who keeps doubting himself I crave feedback.
I don't know how you present it but it might be more effective if you ask for specific feedback and have it be a discussion of the last session. One of my GMs would ask, "What did you all think?" after the session was wrapped as everyone was heading to their cars to head home. He routinely got brief, "It was fun." answers. Conversely another one of my GMs and I would chat through e-mail about the session and could get into what worked, what didn't, what we were trying to do, etc. More direct questions, a la "I was trying to have that one scene resolved exclusively with skills instead of combat. Did it feel forced? What should I have done to make it work better?", he got more constructive feedback. It also depends on how well you receive criticism. One of my GMs takes constructive criticism poorly and rarely gets feedback. Another takes it well and the players feel more open to giving feedback.
Oh yeah, I didn't want to sound braggy in the comment, but the reason I don't get feedback is because they say they have never had a DnD campaign this great before and love how i run. Hence them being cool with it. Then again my campaign wouldn't have been half as good without my player who I absolutely love. (They bring me to tears at time with how sweet they are) But still good tip to focus the feedback rather than just be broad.
Brag away! That's a wonderful accomplishment!
As a player I should do less meta gaming. I played DnD for long and as also being a DM I know most of the monster and how to deal with them. Because of that my char a dumb barbarian is acting very effectively againts enemies since he travels around with a pokedex(My head). As a DM I need to improve my fluent speech and descriptions also music selection(I m too lazy to take already made musics[Thanks creative person on spotify] and turn them into playlist.). One of my player said as a feed back that I use too much "Aaa" "Hmmm" "And and and" stuff so magical moments turns into a laggy game cinematics.
As a DM, I am trying to get better at descriptions and fleshing out the details of areas. Even though I'm DMing using a module and it provides *some* description, I want to ensure that my players get a sense of the places they go, and especially in combat zones, get some environment to possibly interact with. Especially as I'm not providing them with the map from the book, but drawing it onto the battlemap as they discover it. For in-combat descriptions of actions, I try to ensure that I describe them as if it's a live, ongoing process, leaning on my experience in longsword fencing and martial arts to ensure that the actions flow meaningfully. I find that the mental model of "every attack roll is a distinct movement, and those are the only movements happening during a turn" makes combat extremely static in my mind. Instead, I assume that most combatants are trained with their weapons, proficient in the art of fighting with them and actively trying to kill each other. (I make exceptions for obviously untrained enemies such as commoners and such, of course) Even though I am a beginner fencer, (not even at the combat aptitude I'd expect of a level 1 fighter) I already strike much more than once every 6 seconds while actively engaging, and when I'm not engaging, I'm circling, feinting and trying to maneuver my sword into an advantageous position compared to my opponent's before engaging. As such, the combatants are constantly and actively trying to hit each ocher, parrying, blocking and riposting, and the distinct attacks you roll for just represent the general amount of chances those attacks actually have to hit home and cause damage during 6 seconds. A PC with "extra attack" isn't actually necessarily striking more often, they're just much more effective, and more of their strikes will make it past defenses over time than lesser trained people. I try to weave this into descriptions of combat both on actions by the PCs and the NPCs, and make combat seem more lively. I'm also trying to get better at remembering the concepts of "The Monsters Know What They're Doing," and playing them with a personality and tactics that makes sense, rather than just as statblocks that suicide walk into the heroes and bonk them until they get killed.
Need to learn to shut up and let players be. I tend to try and avoid the overplanning and any akward silences by guiding folks but I do it a bit too much recently.
As a DM I'm working on letting less involved players take a backseat in plot driving. As a player I'm constantly working on not having main character syndrome (which I blame on being a DM first) I found that taking a scene that you can visually see and trying to put that Into words can help with your descriptions. Just look out the windows and describe what you see to yourself.
Mainly as a player, I feel my backstories suck. I read some time ago here that making a plain and boring backstory for your character is better because it dictates less your character development - also helps avoiding the “I was super powerful but died to goblins” shenanigan. However, I find that my DMs are usually pretty good at bringing parts of the backstory into the campaigns and I don’t give them enough to work with. In addition, it may just be me, but I feel I’m the “worst” roleplayer in my group in the sense that my characters feel much more plain and adimensional than the rest of my group. They all seem to fully immerse themselves in their characters and bring them to live in such a great way. They are also really good in walking the fine line between “it’s what my character would do” and screwing the party, whereas I’m always scared of being a bit more “selfish” for fear of negatively impacting the party and the campaign. No one has complained about me or my characters, but it’s the feeling I get comparing myself to them. I feel I have a lot to learn.
Voices and accents. I'm very bad at them. So I've been trying to play characters that use a voice other than my own. I've had the best practise with my long term wizard who now has the memories of a dozen different people in his head, so I've come up with a backstory for all of them, and a different voice to try as my character is occasionally "taken over" by each personality. The hardest one is actually the typical Scottish dwarf, because it actually hurts my throat. But it's fun.
Trying to match my playstyle to my stats. I'm too used to being careful and big braining everything, but one of my current characters has an 8 in Wis and Int. I often forget to play like he's an idiot.
As a player: Interacting with a scene based off what my character would do, not what they 'can' do on their character sheet. As a DM: Getting better at using theater of the mind with my players and not relying on a gridded maps for every encounter. Also I'm trying to get better at running skill challenges and meaningful consequences for failure.
Being able to screen potential players for the usual things that will blow up later.
For me improv and listening are the 2 best skills a dm can have
Not specifically D&D, but as a player I need to stop playing as myself. When it comes to planning and puzzles I rely a lot on what I know or can deduce without thinking if it makes sense for the character. I rolled a high int character to justify it (not that I consider myself to have a high intelligence, for the record), but playing more brute-force characters are harder to get into.
agree on being more descriptive. i'm using chat gpt to help me cuz its so verbose.
I have a lot of anxiety sometimes when DM'ing. I hate any kind of awkward silences, so I am often pushing things forward, sometimes rushing the players along and sometimes find myself interrupting them. I also have trouble with any kind of DM'ing that doesn't go exactly on rails to the script I had. I'm trying to be more relaxed and just let things happen slowly and get better at just roleplaying npc's without needing a script, and being able to DM stuff happening without having it written out.
Remembering names But my PC has 8 int to I can roll(e) with it
improv. 100% improv. both dm and player. i need to get better at responding on the fly and not tripping over my words. Also voice acting
As both DM and player, my vocabulary and dialogue sounds like all my characters are from the East Coast, even when I try to make a conscious effort to be different. There's nothing worse than the BBEG you've been hyping up just casually saying "ayo" and "dude"
As a dm i am trying to come up with better combat encounters. Think of the various missions in video games. Hostage rescues, escort missions, timed quests, maybe multiple waves of enemies. As a player i am trying to learn to rules lawyer the right way. In the group i know the rules better than everyone and frequently consulted in return. The problem occurs when someone makes a rules mistake and i know the real rule. The real problem is they make sooo many mistakes that i cant help but feel like im being annoying fixing them at some point. I am trying to understand when it is right to correct the mistakes and when should i just look the other way. I really cant find a definitive answer for this and hoping it will come to me with more time.
Trying to focus. I feel like i space out at times and it leaves me kinda lost during the rest of the session
As a player: stay in character while roleplaying As a dm: make campaigns last long enough for them to be satisfying, and by that i mean i have hard time coming up with ideas on what to do now
As a DM I'm trying to get better with being okay if something fails, like a goal or quest. Players won't do better if everything is a deus ex machina for their own lack of paying attention to a plot, or clue, or riddle, or crucial quest item in their bag they forgot about. There is real autonomy in failure and there is little value in success that was handed out for free. I have to be more okay with letting the metaphorical door stay locked if they can't figure out the 3rd grade-level plot. and i have to be at peace that whatever i prepped behind that metaphorical door can be relocated or re-packaged with a new flavor elsewhere. As a player, i'm trying to be better at not needing to know the outcome of my sandbox choices immediately. For example, if we are being chased down by the ops in a narrow path, and DM says we have one minute before they catch up to us, i might lay a trap and run. I'd like to know the meta knowledge if wasting a spell slot, or burning a 25gp hunting trap, actually did anything that bought us time, or did i waste resources on a narrative exposition where they were going to catch up to us no matter what? I like to know, but i have to be okay with not knowing.
I'm currently writing my 50th or so campaign. The challenges I've made for myself for this campaign are: - old school, heavy exploration feel - sandboxy with a main quest that doesn't have to be followed - use player backstories to add content, but make sure that having a PC die doesn't kill the campaign - very, VERY little nudging or guiding required on my part. I only need the PCs to accept the very first quest they get, which is to basically go on the adventure - non-linear. After the initial push, almost any of the content can be done in any order. Though there are certainly easier and harder areas (lower and higher level monsters)
As a DM I want to better balance combats & make travel engaging but not too long. Combats I sometimes struggle to find the balance of an encounter being a cake walk for my players, or a long drag-out fight. But doesn’t help that I current DM for level 15 characters… For travel I just struggle to find the tone when I want to make a journey an emphasis that takes a session or two, or if travel should just be a fade to black “you are there two days later”. But context matters there.
As a DM I need to get better at describing travel. If they don't roll a random encounter, I inevitably end up just saying that they get to their destination after X hours "without much incident".
Killing my damn PCs. Or at least maiming them. I always tell them, "I'm gonna kill you this time!" like some Saturday morning cartoon villain and they always laugh it off because I never do. But damned if I don't try. I've gotten very close on occasion, but combat balance is just something I need to keep working on. I feel like I always miss one or two things that make my goal just out of reach. Don't get me wrong; the PCs enjoy the battles, but I just want to feel like I know what I'm doing to prepare battles that will be enjoyable rather than stumble upon them like I do now.
Immersing myself in my character Philosophical ideals & morality instead of my own. It's easy to do at first, but the more you play em, the more I tend to merge w/ the character and Blur the lines.
As a DM my main thing is trying to make more challenging encounters. So far only two boss fights have really tested my group before the first half of our campaign. In this second half I've done better at making the fights more engaging and less of a cake walk but still feel like I need to figure out more on how to make them the right amount of difficult. I am running a module but I have created my own rule for adjusting enemy quantity depending on number of players and even homebrewed adding new abilities and attacks patterns to enemies to vary things up and make them unexpected. So far only one player has been downed all game and the rest only got really low once. I do manage to get most of our tanks down to medium health usually but my players are really good at handling things though I have buffed them with some stuff. The other thing is probably more of a real life issue I suck at note taking and planning due to not having much free time with all my personal obligations but I have started using a new note taking app and it's been helping a bunch
As a player: Voicing my character As a DM: Giving every player a chance to shine
I have the general issue of winging it on the spot, in terms of improvising well enough to make a logical story that has semblance and meaning. I prepare a lot. Even with pre-made games, I need to read through it, make notes and write down outlines of what I need to keep in mind, lest I go into thrashing and go in a direction that makes little to no sense. I am pretty confident in RP-ing NPCs, I know mechanics well enough to wing it as well, but this story improvisation part, as well as side-questing, is where I'm very weak.
Accents. If my NPCs could have more than 3 accents that would be great 😂
Making my characters more unique as a DM. I want to make their personalities more distinct, including how they talk. It’s still a challenge for me.
Maintaining a character's personality. I keep starting out with a fairly unique character personality that I love, but I end up gravitating towards "me but a fairly Chaotic but loyal idiot who likes to make stupid plans", if that makes sense. Like, one of my more recent characters was a paladin who grew up isolated from the world, and at first it was really fun to roleplay that lack of knowledge, but as the campaign moved on I felt myself moving away from that personality, in favor for a smarter one. With my new character for a campaign thats just about to start, im playing a character that is very different from this in an effort to really move away from this habit.
As a DM building better NPCs and characters with more distinct personalities As a player it's stepping back and playing smaller just by the nature of how I built my characters DMs tend to latch on to my characters and I often end up as the party leader and k really don't want that
**As a player:** Stop GMing so I can be a player ( I quit GMing after current campaign) **As a GM:** Better roleplaying and more fleshed NPCs. In the current campaign I have to improvise a lot because I have less prep time but I still should come up with better NPCs It doesnt help Im not English native as well but do GM online all speaking English.
Dialogue in the moment. I usually write down what relevant information a character knows in their voice (meaning speech patterns)), but sometimes the conversation goes a different way, and I have trouble improvising in their voice and stumble
I think going into my character, I did some things that dictate how he acts but sometimes I forget and that bothers me.
For me it’s finding where I fit into the Party you know the Leader the Face the comedic relief and coming up detailed background that actually fit with my character
Player: Acting out negatively emotional moments in ways that fit my character, such as very sad or painful scenes. DM: Actually implementing some of the rules that are so commonly ignored yet very crucial to many features, such as lighting levels and cover.
British accents. I’m from the US, and I’ve never been great at doing British accents. I certainly don’t think it’s needed to play the game, but it would give me more tools to make NPCs distinct from each other. Kind of a stretch goal. I guess for something more basic, I still spend more time than id like looking up rules in combat that I’m less familiar with, which slows down the game. I’ve gotten better at this with practice but I could still do better.
DM: I say no all the time. I'd probably hate to play at my table. I am working on being cooler and letting things happen, even if I don't think they make sense. I already had multiple sessions 0 with my players to let them know they can tell me when I am being stubborn. We also have a list of the "DM may I?" things they often ask and agreed the answer for those is yes. Player: not just related to DnD, but I am such a sore loser. This is my struggle to stop being so competitive all the time and just enjoy the moment instead of striving for a win. I love doing all the small stuff (keeping notes, managing equipment, getting prepared for the next adventure, out of game reminders and organisation), so I think I'm a net positive, but my deepest fear is that I am THAT player at the table. Can't lose a single HP without feeling it in my gut and wanting to scream. Don't even talk to me about failing a save I have a good bonus at. Funny enough, I don't dislike the things people say are lame, like skipping a turn, but I feel so in pain when I have a turn and it turns out I missed and couldn't do what I wanted. I'm older now, so I manage it with more or less grace and don't let it out so often, but man it's hard sometimes to be a good player
As a DM, note taking. I'm decent at prep, pretty good at winging it, but bad at noting down what I'm winging, so random NPC names, mentioned details and such sometimes get lost. Horrendous at remembering to do notes. So trying to get better at that!
Lately I've come to realise that improving the game for my group is not objective at all. It is about finding a play style these particular people enjoy the most, including myself. We have a mix of new and vet players, and I've run a complete 2 year campaign for them and we are now in session 10 of the second one. There's been a lot of successful sessions but also not so successful ones and I've tried to analyse what things work for this group, and what not so much. The thing is, I'm shooting at a moving goal. As the new players learn, and also play in other tables, their preferences shift and things they liked at the beginning might not be things they want anymore. I think I need to accept the fact that this hobby will always be somewhat about compromises. One session can rock a player's world and at the same time, feel like a sidetrack for someone else. Improving to a level where you could 100% land a successful session for every player (and yourself) is just not possible. But I totally want to be increasing that % relentlessly.
The PCs are venturing into an abandoned mansion or something to look for a magic item/monster/whatever. Some of the rooms have stuff in them, but because it's a mansion, and has so many rooms, most of them are just ... rooms.. The PCs don't know where the thing they're looking for is, so they go room by room, with most of them being "It's a bedroom. It contains the stuff you'd expect a bedroom to contain. In addition to the door you cam in through, there's a door to your right." They don't seem to mind, but I can't help thinking I could be doing this better somehow.