Hello and welcome to my blog. I'm going to share stories, tips, and other things here. Although the focus is on GMing, I may drift into board games once in a while.
For my first post, I am going to regale my best, proudest moment as a DM to you, and talk about what lessons can be learned from it.
This event happened years ago, back when I was content with only running one game a week, and when I was content with only running fantasy games. I had 5, maybe 6, players who I really enjoyed playing with. One of them, Kyle, was a pretty cool guy. He's long gone now, moved away and got married, but his impact is something I'll make sure to never forget.
So the party had just arrived at a new town, a town that was celebrating some big victory or some-such. The party noticed a Grey Render outside of the town, and was pulled into the party the town was throwing. There were stands with free meat, fruits, ale, water, everything a party could really want in the ways of hospitality. They were told of a great victory long ago, of the town's men attacked and slaughtered a group of evil octopus-people to the West. One of the party was told of a few people who had gone missing recently, but dismissed it as nothing. Most of the group got drunk and passed out, and one of them found himself being carried west-ward by the Grey Render, to supposed protector of the town. Said member discovered a lone mindflayer out in what seemed to be an old cavern of sorts, with a few human cohorts, all under his command.
Another party member woke up in the middle of the night, and discovered his travelling companion missing. After alerting the others, they found the rather large footprints headed West and followed them. They arrived at the mindflayer's lair, and he paralyzed them while explaining that although they had found him, he was going to slowly ruin the town by making them all his slaves as revenge for destroying his brethren. Some of the members of the party managed to get out of his mind-controlling clutches, and he escaped via Grey Render. They watched as his slave carried him over the nearby mountains, easily escaping the party's reach.
A few sessions later, the party had a new friend, an old man. They came across what looked like a mine, but as they went further in the mine became a sort of dungeon. The party, and the old man, got through the dungeon and found what looked like a slide downwards. There were three slides, and after Kyle went down one bravely (they thought they were trapped, not that I blame them) he saw an incredibly long hallway, filled with three rows of people of many different races in robes, all drawing some symbols on the ground beneath them, chanting altogether. At the end of the hallway was a mindflayer.Then the following series of events happened.
Kyle: Alright, I'm gonna run up to one of the robed guys and see what kind of symbols he is making.
Me: Okay, roll SpellCraft.
Kyle: 17, 22.
Me: You look them over and can clearly make out that the man is drawing Necromantic symbols.
Kyle: Aw crap, guys I know what he's doing! He's going to resurrect his old mindflayer friends if we don't figure out a way to stop him ASAP!
I was pretty taken aback. It's like he read my mind, but he just used his head and figured it out. I know it's not a crazy conclusion, but players and DMs tend to think of different wavelengths in my experience, so having a player just GET it like Kyle did was amazing to me.
How can this be applied to your GMing? Well first of all, don't expect the vast majority of your players to figure out what's going on, or why it's going on like my friend Kyle did. Expect your players not to pick up on many clues you drop because they're focused on other things. Whether or not the other things are their cell phones or Grimlak's answer to their duel invitation is for another time, but players have a hard time seeing things as clearly as you do. Because of this, feel free to drop a few more clues than one might expect, because odds are they won't notice, or even care, about them all.
Secondly, although it's harder to show the players what's going on, it is more rewarding to the player (and in my opinion to the GM) when they figure it out themselves. It gives a sense of pride, a reason to be more invested in the outcome of things. I mean, would your players care more about a treasure map they were asked to look into by a friend, or one they found, deciphered, and barely got out alive with while exploring other ruins? So remember, whenever possible - Show, don't tell.
This first article is hopefully helpful, and if you want to leave feedback that'd be much appreciated. The ending to the story may be told in another article, as I can definitely find a lesson to be learned there as well.
Best of luck story-crafting,
Taylor Shuss
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