Grim's Guide to Dungeon Mastering

This may well have already been done here, and if it has then it may well have been done better!

But, hey, it may be of some use or interest to people.

Here follows a short guide to DMing events I wrote up for the Marauders (but with Marauder-specific references removed):

Grim's Guide to DMing:
DMing is a tricky business, its hard to keep everyone participating interested and on track, so I wrote this little guide to help people who want to give it a go.
This is by no means a "Follow how I do it or f*ck off." it is literally a guide, with some hints and tips. Follow them if you wish, ignore them if you'd rather!

1) Start Small
Huge plotlines and enormous events are a nightmare. Any event with more than half a dozen participants can be a pain in the arse to run. This is best dealt with by starting small.
If you want to do a huge, long-term plotline, then fine! But your best bet is to start it low-key and build the event up over a few weeks. Jumping straight into a complicated and convoluted event can lead to everyone participating being confused. So start small, start with an introductory event. If your event is to save the world from Sargeras (and I hope it isn't!) then don't jump straight into the big bad guy stomping his feet and fighting 20 characters, but start with the characters finding signs of demonic activity somewhere and fighting the demons they find.

2) We're Stupid and Require Hints
Always, ALWAYS drop hints. If no one gets the hints, so be it but drop them anyway. In the chaos and excitement of fighting a horde of demons characters may not notice the super-important demonic artifact on the floor, so try to draw attention to these things either before or after any RP fighting.
This leads nicely onto...

3) OK, Time for Plan Z
This is my most important guideline... And one I would strongly recommend EVERYONE follows if they wish to succeed at DMing. DO NOT EVER HAVE A LINEAR PLOT. There is NOTHING less interesting than having the result of the event and plotline already decided. We all want to RP and all want to develop our characters, we all want to be the hero. Let people RP the event their own way, let the officers guide them IC and let the characters make the decisions.
This requires EITHER backup plans that have backup plans that also have backup plans, or they require you to be able to think QUICK and on your feet. My preference is always to have a very vague outline of what happens but then to think quick for when people invariably don't do what I expected.
If your event is supposed to have the characters rescue a Princess I would almost gaurantee that some bright spark will kill and eat the Princess instead. BE PREPARED TO DEAL WITH THIS. And seriously, don't stop things like that happening. That's not a DM's job. If the characters kill and eat your incredibly important plotline Princes, deal with it! If that means your plotline is ruined, you planned badly and must live with the consequences.

4) The DM is A Demi-God, Not a God!
As DM your primary resonsibility is to ensure everyone is having fun. Try to avoid god-moting, because even a DM can god-mote. You have the final say in whatever happens, and as such you have a heavy responsibility to ensure you are not taking things too far. This is closely linked to number 3) above.

5) Watch Me! WATCH ME!
The DM can take part in the event, you are not limited to standing on the sidelines and guiding the fun. I try to actively join in in every event I run!
It is a little difficult, and in joining in you are somewhat forced to not be as active a participant as everyone else, but thats no reason for you not to emote your character getting in there and swinging his / her sword.
This being said, the event should NEVER devolve into everyone watching you be the hero. If its fitting for your character to do something heroic, then great, if your rolls (if you're doing a rolling event) are high, then great! Be heroic! But, there is little as boring as the participants standing around bored watching your character save the day.
Everyone should be having fun, not just you.
This leads nicely onto...

6) Your Mission is to... Guard the Door
Try to avoid giving people boring tasks, unless you have to. This includes things like guard duty, or washing the dishes, or whatever else.
This includes events involving things like interrogation or torturing prisoners. These are fun things to do, but in my experience almost always end up with two or three people doing everything and the other dozen slowly falling asleep.
If your event requires something which only needs a couple of people then get the rest of the group to do something else, ANYTHING to avoid them standing around bored.

7) We're All Friends Here
Don't be afraid to ask for help. Some events need more than one DM. If you need to split the group up and send some off somewhere, ask someone experienced and trustworthy to DM that section. Explain to them in private what you need them to do, then let them run with it.
The risk with this is they don't do exactly what you intended them to do, but such is life. Deal with it! (See Guideline 3)

8 ) There Seems to be an Axe in My Face
Don't be afraid to hurt the characters participating in your event. Warn them OOC before the event starts that by attending they run the risk of their character being injured, and provided they agree then go!
Limit yourself to non-game changing injuries, anything such as severed limbs, missing eyes or death should never be dished out to the participants unless they have specifically requested or agreed to it.

9) Get Your Hand Out of My...
The players are not puppets, do not under any circumstances tell them privately what to do - no whispering someone for example, and asking them to walk over somewhere and set off a trap.
If you want something similar to this then your plan needs to be a vague one, "As soon as character #01 has moved there a bit I will set the trap off and say it was his fault." for example.

10) BATTLING OVER A BURNING WORLD
Try to avoid crazy events or plotlines that could change the World of Warcraft lore. Don't blow up Orgrimmar, don't murder Varian Wryn, don't unleash the plague of undeath inside Ironforge.
Menace and evil can be built up without resorting to pantomime villains or insane plot devices.
If you want evil then think before you start the event... Evil isn't planting nuclear bombs in Silvermoon, its more subtle and smaller than that. Its how your NPC bad guys treat prisoners, its what they do to defenceless civilians, etc etc.
This is a busy server with a lot of RP guilds, you also don't want to accidently blow up another guild's base of operations.

11) No Room at the Inn
If your event is a small event, if you don't need more people participating than you've got then don't be afraid to turn people wanting to join in down. The last thing you'd want is 4 more characters joining in, swamping you and then getting bored and wandering off.
If people get annoyed by this, then suggest they make their own damn event!

12) It was a Dark and Stormy Night...
Set the scene. What is the weather like? What noises can the characters hear? Is it dark? Is it daylight? What are the NPCs acting like? Are they nervous? Happy? Do corpses litter the floor?
Just rushing into a generic zone and battling whatever is there is dull. Set the scene, build up nerves and anticipation. Or, alternatively, make everything seem A OK then crush the happiness with a sudden attack.
This is quite important I think, without knowing where we are and what its like there, we're just rolling computer dice. This being said, don't go overboard and spend an hour detailing everything! A few quick descriptions will suffice.

13) Time Freeze!
Time freezes are useful, but don't use them excessively. They break up the flow of the event and can lead to people losing track of what is going on. I tend to only use them in an emergency, if something happens OOC and it needs to be sorted out, then time freeze.
For those who aren't aware, a time freeze is when the DM announces 'TIME FREEZE'. All characters participating must then 'pause' their characters until the DM announces 'TIME IN'.

14) I'm Tired
Don't let the event take too long. A couple of hours is a long event, and you will find people start drifting off, logging off or otherwise acting up. Try to keep events to less than 2 hours, especially larger events.

15) World of WARcraft
I try to make events quite bloody. I like to see characters hurt, I like to kill off NPCs and I like to do it graphically. Don't go nuts and emote every spurt of blood or loop of intestine, but when a tauren hits a gnome with his axe, its probably going to be messy.
Remember that we're RPing in the World of WARcraft, we go to war and we hurt things. A frostbolt doesn't just hit someone, it freezes them. Their skin cracks and freezes and they're likely to panic as they find themselves unable to move. Maces crush bone and cause messy wounds, swords stab and cut, axes smash and slash! Shadowbolts wither the target horrifically.
Tailor your emotes and raid warnings to the group mind, so if you have a bunch of young 'uns OOC with you, tone it down. If its late at night and the participants are on the older side of things then let loose and let the blood flow.

16) Chill!
Try to stay calm! Deal with things one emote at a time. Use your intuition and common sense to limit the effects of people's emotes. If someone emotes something like.... "Grim leaps in, rugby tackles his target, punches it in the head, hacks its leg off, bites its throat out and pummels the target into bloody goo." then limit it! Let them roll and then pick one or two of the actions in the emote to raid warning the result (assuming you're running an event with rolling).

17) Talk is Cheap
Don't be afraid to make 'invisible' NPCs, ask the players to use their imaginations and raid warning NPCs being around. Use raid warnings to show the NPCs taking part in group conversations, and much as described elsewhere in this guide, don't let your NPCs waffle on for too long, or people will alt tab out and go look at monkey porn, and not pay attention to whats happening.

18) Keep it Even
If you split your event between yourself and a second DM, then try to ensure one group doesn't get ALL the fun. Try to keep the time each group is spending RPing equal and try not to focus too much on one group at the expense of the other.
For example, don't send one group off to catch chickens for dinner while the other fights a huge demon-lord and saves the world.

19) HAI GAIS I'M AN NPC!
Using spare people on alts as NPCs is good! See if anyone can do this for you but MAKE SURE YOU TELL THEM WHAT YOU EXPECT THEM TO ACT LIKE. Don't tell them what to do, point by point, but do tell them a very brief idea of what their character's motivations are and what their personality is. Then you'll have to trust them somewhat to not ruin your event!
It's not all bad though, having people actually RP as NPCs adds a great dimension of realism to things, much better than the above-mentioned raid warning of 'invisible' NPCs.

I've heard of the DM events of Shatterskulls before, from a certain witch doctor. I must say, you got a great system there.

Thank you for writing it here.

There's so much truth in this in regards to event running, i hope more people read it.

DMed events or otherwise.

Especially the Watch me, and Guard the door parts. Those are crucial to any event organiser.

Good write up

Really good little guide might add some more observations/notes, but my main ones are in agreement absoloutely with what you've posted.

A few major ones are:
Like you said, people will NEVER do what you expect as a DM. This is the prime rule above all else

For events that use the environment/emote weather/etc, be prepared for the possibility of running into other guilds/players that don't know what's going on (unless in an instance)

Try to avoid bottlenecks where people have to; cross a trap/ravine one-by-one, for example. The waiting parties WILL lose interest and focus.

Make sure it's not a 'bubble'- ie, leads on into future rp, has lasting consequences, etc. The best events I've been on/done have been those that have introduced new characters in some way, or major developments for existing ones. Involve threats or rewards that go beyond being patched up in the infirmary once, or getting a bit of gold.

Avoid complex mechanics involving /rolls etc- keep it simple, and keep it to emotes as much as possible, with a few exceptions.

I have yet to read it but thanks for putting it up! I've never really thought about creating my own until recently. Always nice to have a few pointers

If there's any interest I can also post up our 'rolling rules' system.

I should add, there's more ways to DM than to use dice rolling, but its the way I personally prefer doing.

And thanks for the kind words!

Love the guide, Grim. Brought back memories of us walking down the road in London swapping DMing experiences.

If I might say so, I think the most important rule on there is "3) Ok, Time for Plan Z". Railroading is never a good thing, DMs need to be flexible...kinda like this guy:

Having DMed a few events before, I've always stuck mostly to these points (except the first time.. I thought /RW would be immersion-breaking so I tried to rely purely on IC events. It went incredibly badly), but I've always got the impression that people found them really boring.

Kinda off topic, but do you have any screenshots or videos of DM events I could look at just to see how it usually works?

But yeah, great guide!

Not got any screenshots, but if you pop onto Horde side at some point we can at the very least talk, and maybe give a brief demonstration too.

And yes Carraen!

Good times in London, always interesting to talk to people (especially IRL) about this sort of thing.

<3 is all i can type.