hollowworld.uk

A lot of people have reached out wanting to DM stuff! This is kind of a thread for you, and kind of a thread I wanted to write anyway. I have been DMing for a couple of years, and these are some truisms I stand by. These are not binding principles, but just some thoughts and advice from me to anyone who wants to try their hand at DMing. So if you disagree with me and want to do things another way, good!

Nothing ever wants to die! Self-preservation is like the thing where scientists put a dot on an animal's head and put it in front of a mirror to see if it recognizes that it's sentient enough to realize it's a mirror and the dot is on their own forehead. It's immediately obvious when something or someone has no concern for their life, and if you expected them to, it's incredibly jarring. Wild animals will not fight to the death; rational people will not fight to the death; celestial concepts will not fight to the death; wild and wayward demons will not fight to the death. With very few exceptions, not having things fight to the death will make the creatures you're DMing feel more believable and real.

Predatory creatures are not mindless killing machines! Normal ass regular every day wolves don't go out attacking people! You've fallen victim to premedieval propaganda that was propagated by superstitious peasants and justifiably upset farmers whose livestock were the victims of wolves! Predators want food, they don't want a fight. If something seems unfamiliar, they will be wary. If they're sated, they're likely going to try to avoid a fight. If something fights back or stands a reasonable chance of actually hurting them, they'll back off. A wounded predator is a dead predator, and if it seems likely that something will result in their injury, they probably won't do the thing!

Scheduling sucks and I hate it! The hardest part of DMing is getting all your dumb friends with their stupid real life responsibilities online in the first place.

It's more important to focus on the overall story than any individual event! It's a good thing if the players manage to completely fuck up your plans and turn a four hour marathon into a one hour breeze, because that one event wasn't the only thing you're ever going to do. The story carries on in the RP that people have afterwards, and the future events you have planned out.

Reusing NPCs and locations is a good thing! Let people retreat and reintroduce them later as a familiar face. Have a new threat move into the old location. The people want a long and storied history - not one you've written, but one they've written. If you want to make a creepy atmosphere, turning a familiar space unfamiliar is one of the best ways to do so. Meeting a new person is generally a fraught experience, but meeting a familiar person in an unfamiliar environment is interesting - no one is focused on the NPC, they're focused on what's going on.

They're not really NPCs! I always hear the advice that the DM is a player and bla bla. The DM's characters are still called NPCs though and that's such a misnomer. Bad DMing is making the other players' results not feel earned, and treating your characters as inconsequential set pieces to the more interesting story that the players are making is self-defeating. Let your NPCs fall in love. Let them do cool shit. Let them be better than the players. As long as it is for a broader purpose than just making yourself feel cool, and as long as it feels earned, your NPCs should be on an essentially even playing field with the PCs.