So this past week we had another session. We usually play every other Wednesday, which is really not a lot of gaming time a year if you think about it. 26 times a year, give or take, remove a few for those days that you just can’t make it and what? We’re looking at not too many sessions since the release of 4e.
Having said that, this past session reminded me that I have much to learn before I’m one of these dm’s that can run a game with his eyes closed. I made some newbie mistakes and here now I’m going to highlight them so you keep them in mind for your games, in case you are as new as me:
Read, then re-read the monsters: 4e monsters have great looking stat blocks. They are easy to read, and with tools such as the monster builder and compendium, they are easy to modify as well. You need to study the stat block and make a note, or memorize, stuff that the monster automatically has. For example, auras. I ran a beholder this week, and he has an aura 5. I kept forgetting to apply the aura every time someone’s turn came up. He also doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks from his rays. Well guess what, in my game he did because I missed that part of the stat block. I effectively gimped severely what should be a major threat. Newbie mistakes, plain and simple. Guilty as charged.
Rules familiarity: While I’m not advocating becoming a walking encyclopedia of rules knowledge, there are ctain rules that need to be known after a while, just to keep the game moving. I find myself constantly having to go back to the books every time someone wants to jump for example. At this point in time, I should already be familiar with the rule. Also, I think it’s a good idea to be knowledgeable about the classes my PC’s are playing, in order to avoid this exchange: “Okay, I roll a 14, but my xx gives me a +1, then I have my xx of xx that grants me a +x, oh and remember my xx is activated so I have a +xx so my final roll is a 31. I think that hits…. Hmm. Okay.” Honestly, in my game, I’m trusting my players to not be lying to me, because I haven’t taken the time to really see how the 7 classes work. Bad job on my part. Newbie mistake, again, guilty as charged.
Study the tactics, they are there for a reason: 4e adventure design gives the dm monster tactics that are very easy to read, understand and put it into play. Read them, don’t just gloss over them. They work alongside the environment and the surroundings to complete the encounter. The monsters don’t act in a vacuum, they play off each other and off their location. As a DM, you need to know this for each encounter you are running. I made the mistake of glossing over the tactics in a particular encounter and missed a very important detail that would have made a huge difference in the end.
This next one is subject to debate and personal preference, but drawing the maps ahead of time is a time saver. I normally either print maps out, or have them pre-assembled with tiles, but not this past session, and it sloooooowed things down to have to draw things out. It didn’t help that the map we are in is full of little walls here and there… it’s a ruined tower. Try to have the maps already done, you’ll save time at the table and avoid comments like “Hurry up Picasso!”
Oh crap Cavalier, I forgot Venger's aura. Take 10 points necrotic. Damn.
I know that I’m not the first, nor last Dm that will make this type of errors while running a game. I put these out there though so you new Dm’s like me can learn from my experience and keep it in mind for your next game.
www. Newbie DM .com 
Illusive Dreams
November 20, 2009
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Auras are definitely something that is easily missed because of the placement on the stat card. Tactics are also another big thing. Like monster runs away at xx HP, or the Ogres continue to move around. Stuff like that. I think we have all been guilty of that kind of stuff at times. I know I have and I havent been DMing since 4e came out. Actually only a few months (July).
All this info is some darn good insight. I despise rules lawyers though. They take SOO much away from the game. The rules are not hardcoded and they are open to DM interpretation.
Thanks again!
pdunwin
November 20, 2009
I feel your pain.
Auras are hard to remember, as are abilities that modify opportunity attacks. Let me ask: when it was pointed out that the beholder was going to incur a lot of opportunity attacks did you stop and think that the monster seemed poorly designed? Now, not all rules are good and sensical, but a good portion of the time when I hear a DM say that something doesn’t make sense, they’re missing something. If you hear that come out of your mouth, stop and doublecheck your understanding. Then, if it still seems like a poor design, either houserule it, or dock the party some XP for the weaker challenge (without telling them, of course).
Don’t beat yourself up about not memorizing rules, especially the jumping rules which have taken the place of grappling as the most complicated in the game. Eyeball what the player wants to do and estimate a DC. Chances are you won’t be far off, and if the player questions it, explain that you’re trying to move things along and ask that they look it up so you can be educated later. A reasonable player gets this, and it’s the basic advice I usually see.
The one thing I agree you should try to have a good handle on are your PCs. Know their basic abilities, have some idea of their skills, and a general idea of their powers. This will help you both help them and challenge them. I wish my DM did this, instead of asking _every_game_ if the rogue should really be rolling d8s for his Sneak Attack.
Maps are tricky, yeah. I hate it when my DM stops to draw things out. If you have a grid already, maybe just have a handful of straight edges on hand, to quickly delineate walls etc, and toss on some 1×1 tiles for details. Also, you could tell your players roughly what they’re facing and tell them to talk tactics while you sketch.
Sarah Darkmagic
November 20, 2009
I’ve been guilty of all of these. I love 4e, but part of the problem is that the cool stuff the heroes and monsters can do often makes things a bit harder on the DM. I’m still trying to figure out a good way to keep track of conditions and the like as none of them work out that well. The color markers are great, except when you have more condition powers than colors or you forget what the colors mean. The players often forget to remind the DM about their ongoing effects and I don’t always remember to remind them about the ones they are under. Auras are among the hardest for me. But, in the end, all that matters is that everyone is having fun and, as far as I can tell, we’ve been having a lot of fun.
DM Ron
November 20, 2009
It really looks like you already know how to fix the things that troubled your last game. These are things that I’ve mentioned before as well. Great insight here.
Even the more experienced DM’s run into these issues, especially with 4th Edition. There are a lot of things going on with monsters. Heck, when I first started DM-ing 4E I was forgetting to shift my goblins when they were missed by melee attacks! The higher level monsters, especially the elites and solos, get more and more complicated with more little ‘quirks’ to watch out for. You’re exactly right in that you have to read and then re-read those stat-blocks.
As for the maps, I agree and disagree. I like to have all the tiles set aside, I’ll keep Encounter 1 in one bag and Encounter 2 in another and so on. At least, I do when I can. To create a lot of good areas, you practically have to have 2 sets of each tile set, which can suck sometimes. Other times in some modules, the maps they give you don’t match up with any tile sets, so you’re better off having a blank mat that you can draw on. Now, if you’ve got well-defined areas such as a tavern room or other crafted structure, I’ll draw it as exact as I can. It doesn’t have to look good, but you have to be able to tell what everything is. For outdoor or underground caverns — areas with jagged walls or no walls at all, I’ll estimate and even redesign the entire room or Encounter Area as needed to speed up mapping. It goes almost hand-in-hand with anti-rules-lawyering, the map (like the rules) should always be at the DM’s discretion.
Spenser
November 20, 2009
Why, back in my day, once you got a decent level every monster had fistful of feats you’d have to look up in various books before you could even think of running them properly. And gods help you if the monster could casts spells. And forget about these “great looking stat blocks,” all we had to go by was a block of text that had almost no coherent order. Heck, it took so much time to get your head around a monster, we didn’t have time for your fancy-schmancy “tactics.” Still, we ran those monsters, and we were happy, dammit.
And about this “rules familiarity” nonsense: Just set the DCs on the fly and if they players don’t like the outcome, well that’s just how the castle crumbles. And they should be happy there’s a map in the first place so they don’t have to pull a muscle imagining the battlefield! Why, I remember the days when the only maps we had were squiggly lines on notebook paper.
[/joke]
Mike Shea
November 20, 2009
These are some really good tips. I too have made some really bonehead mistakes that removed a lot of the threat of a creature. Sometimes I forget an ability, like an aura, so I make it a bit more powerful near the end. If it had an aura that did 10 damage the whole fight but I forgot until its bloodied, suddenly its an aura 15!
The beholder is a tricky beast to run because of those eye-rays. I had a similar problem when I ran a Death Tyrant.
As you get into the paragon tiers, its really important to remember all the things monsters do OFF of their turn like interrupts and auras. There’s not so many of these in the heroic tier.
Great post!
satyre
November 20, 2009
Great post. Empathise with you about the ready-made maps; yet if you’re big on improvisation, it’s difficult to prep those maps. Mind you, if you’re in improv mode, that shouldn’t be an issue. 😉
On the interrupt/aura thing, if you have a cheatsheet for your session’s monsters, it’s worth putting these in a separate block for your attention (or a post-it note).
As for aura templates, the bind is that such things ideally are transparent. Creating ready-made acetates of these is a chore; would it benefit someone to mass-produce these I wonder?
Anarkeith
November 20, 2009
Is there a DM, newbie or otherwise, who has not forgotten a monster power, or some bit of rules trivia? I don’t think so. The art of being a DM is disguising the omissions, or playing through mistakes. If your players are having fun, they’re unlikely to notice.
In the event a player says “good thing you forgot that aura effect, we would have been cooked otherwise!”, you should respond with something like, “oh, you noticed the missing aura? Good. You’ll need that information soon…” Keep ’em guessing!
misterecho
November 20, 2009
thanks for sharing your mistakes, hopefully i will learn from them!
peter
November 21, 2009
i do love 4e but i don’t see why knowing monster stats backwards or remembering every tactic makes you a good dm? maybe a good war gamer but not dm. if you miss a power oh well. now if you group has a sucky night thats at least a bit your fault but not if you miss some aura damage. to be honest if a monster has so many powers and complex tactics that you miss stuff it says to me the monster is to complex. i’d say focus on story and giving the group (which includes you) has a great night. unless you have a computer like brain monsters have way too many exceptions and clauses sojust don’t worry, if the power is cool you will remember and if you forget chances are its for the best.
strangevistas
November 21, 2009
I think you’re sweating this WAY too much.
Rule familiarity first. You don’t need to know how all the classes work: it’s the player’s job to know how their PC works. If you have concerns that your players are lying to you, find a new group. There’s a lot of trust necessary to make this work, either you have it or you don’t.
Monster stats and tactics. What is important is flow, pure and simple. Keeping the action and gameplay going at a good, steady pace makes for a good session and the emotional build-up to whatever happens at the end. If you forget an aura, you forget an aura. Throw it in next time and if the players ask what happened the turn before, tell ’em you forgot and Happy Birthday. Believe me, they won’t complain. And plot out tactics before the adventure, think about how everyone works together (the archtypes in the DMG help for this) and then just stick to the plan in the session.
Finally, drawing maps. I’d consider investing in a Chessex wipeable mat and a dry erase marker with a foam eraser on the end. That way you can just sketch the room out quickly and wipe it down. Laying out the room in detail has become the one bog-down point in D&D since third edition. Don’t sweat it. As the guy ahead of me said, it’s about story and giving the group a great night, not about whether you played the goblins to their full extent or that you knew that Warlords give a +2 to initiative rolls.
Swordgleam
November 21, 2009
I’m not a newbie, but I still make these mistakes from time to time. No one’s perfect.
And you can turn each of them to your advantage in the long run. Gimped beholder? Well, something must have made that beholder weaker than the others – perhaps some kind of foul magic is afoot? Surely this means that, in the course of dealing with the threat, the players will come across a full-powered beholder and have to face a TRUE challenge.
Not knowing the classes? I’m not sure I see this as a mistake. If you can’t trust your players not to make up bonuses, there’s a much bigger problem going on than you not having time to memorize the PHB. But I do agree it is helpful to have some idea what’s going on, since the players will forget things about their classes, just like you forget things about your monsters.
Enemy tactics are weak? Not all minions are incompetent, but not all minions are well-oiled machines, either. Variety is the spice of life.
Maps? Yeah, personal preference. No comment.
PJ Rake
November 21, 2009
great post!
just this past week, i forgot to use a monster’s ability, but the overall combat came out really good, so i guess that’s the most important thing. i know next time they face the same monster, i won’t forget that ability.
Neal Hebert
November 22, 2009
Robin Laws said it best, and I agree wholeheartedly – the quickest decision is always the best decision in combat. I’ll frequently tell a player who starts waffling about what they’re going to do to just roll a d20 and worry about stuff if it’s a decent roll, otherwise we’ll move on and he can prepare better for next turn.
Regarding maps – buy a chessex battlemap and a wet erase marker and just draw something. At the end of the day, players are more interested in playing the game than in whether your maps are cool. The vast majority of groups will take a bland map if it means they get to play more – and in a group of your groups’ size, maximize the time you’ve got.
The most important thing to remember is that players don’t always enjoy the same things DMs enjoy. And that’s OK because it reminds us not to get up our own asses with battlemaps, NPC relationship diagrams (my personal weakness), and everything else that adds to our prep time.
The lesson I’ve learned about DMing that’s most important is that I do my best work when I’m just bullshitting everything and improving a session. The second lesson I’ve learned is that I have to prepare a session like crazy – overprepare, really, considering I’ll throw everything out the window when we play – so that I’ll trust myself enough to improv like crazy.
But I run a game for 4 players, so it’s easier to make quick decisions when there are less people around the table. I’m about to start running a second campaign for assorted theatre graduate students (some in acting, which excites the hell out of me!), professors and PhD students like me. The catch is that this group will likely involve 5 or more players, which breaks just about every DMing preference I have.
So soon I’ll be in your world, running modules and reigning in a pack of nerd stallions. I suspect this will give me a new appreciation for the challenges of your sessions.
Totte Alm
November 22, 2009
I’ve been a DM for the past 30+ years, and I still make mistakes like that.
When we play, many of my players also DM, so we have what someone called “The Union of Monsters”, who sees to the monsters rights. Whenever a DM does something that accidentally nerfs a monster, “The Union of Monsters”steps in, represented by one of the players. In your case, it would be saying “DM, The Union of the Monsters says this monster should not provoke Opportunity Attacks with these attack…”
And of cause, we have “PCs Union” as well, like “DM, the Player Union says that the attack from that monster should have a -2 concealment penalty.
Of cause, this “Union” talk is just for fun, but as we all try to get the game fair and square, it has been a polite way of correcting the DM.
Cheers,
/ Totte
newbiedm
November 22, 2009
I want to thank all you guys for chiming in here. I’ve learned two things from reading all these comments… don’t sweat the small stuff, and just have fun.
In the end, that’s the number one rule every single Dm has to follow. Make your table fun for your players.
What’s fun in a game where every single rule is being followed, every monster is acting perfectly, yet the players are bored? Nothing.
Thanks guys, I don’t feel too bad, although I will still try to correct these issues, while maintaining a fun table at the same time. If I slip, so be it.
Colmarr
November 22, 2009
Newbie, don’t worry about it. Everyone has days when things don’t quite gel.
One rule of thumb I find helpful with long jump checks is that the distance you jump is equal to the result of the roll. A roll of 24 equals a jump of 24 feet (which rounds down to 4 squares). If the character doesn’t have a 2-square run up, halve the result.
The 1-to-1 equivalency is much easier to remember than the squares formula that the 4e rules use.
(I’ve never had to look at the high jump rules to see if there’s a similar equivalency there).
Baz Stevens
November 23, 2009
Don’t beat yourself up about the aura thing, it gets to all of us eventually. Here’s a tip though: have you evered noticed how the stat blocks are (almost) in the right order for the encounter? Perception threw me a few times because it’s at the top, because the DM is more likely to need it early in the encounter, while the other skills are at the bottom. Same with Auras. Because they’re ‘always on’ they’re up there near the defences and hits. If only the powers were listed in a tactical order too. F’rex, basic attacks should go near the bottom, dailies at the top. that way, if you get lost as the DM you can just work your way down the list and you won’t be far wrong.
J. B.
November 24, 2009
How do I get one of those cool newbie dm t-shirts?
fenmarel
November 25, 2009
About that jump stuff, you could use a side-note in your notebook to help you finding it faster. I always use “markers” (kind of tokens) over my DM Shield to easily remember the monster’s most important characteristics. It usually takes me about 2 hours preparing them for an average campaign (4 hours long, about 40 “markers”). Note that some of them are just repetitions, so they are blank. These can be used again and again, so it’s not a time loss at all. Besides, I can use side-notes and number them to make the task easier. It’s also a way to track the turns, you position these over your shield according to their initiative count (you can make a sequence matrix instead, but it’s not that visual).
BTW, nice blog!
Greg
November 27, 2009
It look though that from the mistake you describe it’s not so bad. Better to mistake in favor of the PCs than he other way around, easer to fix…
Not that you’re looking, but in this instance where the monster was gimped I’d just reduce the exp points for it and let the players know why. I wouldn’t offer to re-fight the scene, just let them know that this is how you’ll handle the rare times it happens that you severely gimp a monster.
Braulio
January 13, 2010
You need to trust your players somewhat. Don’t worry about not knowing everything about a PC, but if you feel like things are going just a little too well for them, figure it out after the game session. Be very strict if you do find a player is cheating, though.