User:Average/DM
You, sir or madam, have the noble role of guiding your wily players into true adventurers, of developing rich and imaginative campaigns, and ascending peaks of EPICNESS.
The role of Dungeon Master you should already be familiar. S/He is the arbiter, the dispenser of gifts, the visioneer, and the teacher. They also serve the gods and play the NPCs. A good DM has high CHR and INT. There may be little tipping of the "divine scales of justice" on DM die rolls done, of course all to make things a little fairer and more interesting. In a high-stakes game, you might even have two DMs -- one to watch the players and one to generate the narrative.
Players get experience when they learn, build, or conquer something. That experience turns into XP or it can turn into a skill that the player now keeps as a learned power. XP == power, as does a skill. Take care not to over-create these two. Players shouldn't necessarily know their XP value, only their level. If players need a boost of morale, they can be informed whether they are past the half-way point yet. This is to avoid obsessions with gaining XP to level -- usually by slashing-style play. The goal is to actually build wisdom by having milestone achievements that are well-conceived for structured play.
DM's earn mana by the conference of other DM groups in regional D&D tournaments. DM's act as one of the gods in the v5-style and can create an in-game name (perhaps your players will pray to you when things get tough :^D). This mana can be used to mint coinage for their games, auto-generate equipment for the realms, and other such energy-consuming activity. Perhaps even calling the high-level dragons (high-level players holding one of the colors of the D&D universe) to engage their city on some pressing issue.
Don't over create gold in your realms either, lest your economy turn meaningless if you play between DMs. Keep in mind that about 1000XP == 10gp.
One gains a skill for knowing how to avoid a fall (earning an automatic "pathfinding" skill). Disarming a trap should not earn XP unless the trap is a puzzle set-up for players to solve. For explorers, they gain XP for moving and finding new areas of interest in the realm (entrance to a unexplored cave?).
The DM should at all times, have all the tier paths for every class. That is one of the benefits of being DM: privileged knowledge. They get to know the skills/spells/et cetera gained as players progress. The players themselves should gather that through player lore (not in PHB). Boundaries can be smoother. For example, a DM might place a spell for their new-level on a scroll which they come upon, through some relavant interaction (visiting a guild, etc). A warrior might gain a skill, through a training exercise from the DM given during combat.
DM should guide classes along these lines, which represent plateaus for the respective classes:
- Warrior : built their STR into an adamantine CON.
- Mage: Grows their INT towards a DEX.
- Trader: elevates all their DEX into super-sharp INT.
- Healer: takes their PTY and transforms it into angelic CHR.
- Leader: Uses their reserve of CON to make their personal STR.
- Queen/King: turning their development of CHR from juvenile into WIS.
- Explorer: taking their reserve of PER from the mundane and unimportant to transmute it into ASM.
- Herbalist/Druid: takes their abundance of ASM to make PER, acutely sensitive to all that they've made or keep with perfection.
At PC death (permanent), unless PC specifies otherwise (within the game), any unclaimed equipment goes to the respective dragon color for their class and recycles by the WotC:
- Mages: equipment and robes claimed by Black Dragon
- Warriors: weapons and gold go to Red Dragon
- Craftslans: goes to Orange Dragon
- Clerics: Yellow Dragons
- Rangers: Green Dragons
- Leaders: Blue Dragons
- Nobles; Purple Dragons
- Naturists: all equipment and goods unknown ("claimed" by Voldemort/White Snake)
DMs manage the cities for the magistrate class and give special insights to leaders. Since there aren't going to be players for every citizen of the city, any player can raise an issue about the city and the DM can decide how the Lord/Countess has to manage it. If a player visits the city and thinks "I wonder where the citizens get their water?", the DM may decide that the next challenge for the Lord/Coutness is to build a canal from the river. Or: "What do all these people do?"", the DM might put it on her/his list for the Lord/Countess to create guilds for various crafts and calculate how much output there is and where it goes. The general store can take only so much, you know.
Leaders get bird-eye-view insights, giving them special knowledge from campaigns maps that are the privy of the DM. They can also get "gut instincts": answers to statements given by the player to the DM. Player: "I want some treasure". DM: "You sense a pull to the east over the mountains of Evercrest." The DM has to guage these requests for insight through the lens of their gods and the DM sense of adventure. If the gods directives are to "clear the territories of orcs for city building", the DM can decide that it isn't in the best interest to lead their player to some pot of gold and can "teach" the player through the school of tough love, giving them answers that lead to a dragon-infested cave of gold, teaching temperament and planning.
DMs express the will of the gods. Perhaps there are 6 different gods connected to the realm they are playing. Those 6 gods have 6 different agendas they are trying to accomplish. These agendas create subtle effects all over game-play... from the appearances of various NPCs, to the type of loot that is placed in the realms, to luck whenever a player hits one of the god`s waypoints. The DM rolls the advantage die behind the screen so that the player doesn't know that s/he is moving in a favorable way or not. Some gods don't get along, and if one of your players "worships" one of them while the other players go off in the direction of their gods, that player might get bad luck along their journey. The extent of this bad luck depends on the power of that god relative to the others.
DMs should play shopkeepers properly. That means that they shouldn't just give out equipment like candy, but make players barter or negotiate for items. Your incentive to bargain is that DMs get to keep this money for their own bank. A DM should develop a reparte that allows players to be on their toes when taking the time in a shop. If a player is playing like: "Uh, do you have any swords?" You can look at him and grunt: "What?! Did you just get off the street?".
DM can roll a d4 to determine shopkeeper's style:
- shrewd (gets as much as s/he can),
- lazy (loses money on sales),
- functional (there to serve), and
- devious (will try to trick you).
Shrewd shopkeepers teach players how to assess the worth of what they want or are selling. Lazy ones provide equipment that might be fortuitous for players to have, functional ones don't provide any special exchanges but have nearly everything, and devious ones teach players to ask more questions.
STUB Q: should DM/player make decision on: gaining a skill VS. XP? Player has to hold their own then. Perhaps a player has to forfeit 10% of the levels XP to gain the skill/spell, etc....
See also DM tricks.
The DM should start with a fixed amount of currency that they can hand out to other players and deduct from their own account. DM should buy acquire more currency through buying D&D campaign books or forge it from the craftslans. They should not concoct it out of thin air, lest their economy become meaningless.
Leaders can DM their own cities, if you so choose. The DM can play a secondary role of a "tourist": make a [[wild[]] character on the spot, of average ability, and tag along.
Currency[edit]
10 cp = 1 sp = 1/10gp = 1/100 pp = 1/1000 ep.
You're going to learn some economic theory here. Scarcity is half of what determines value in economics. If everything is abundant, then nothing is valuable economically (not to be confused with non-economic things like air, which is abundant but still valuable).
For each level you improve a player you, the DM, can take 5% of the XP gained to convert to copper pieces in which you can "buy" items out of the equipment list; i.e. 1000XP = 50cp. This acts as a tax to the players for your development of their characters. Alternatively, if your players shower you with gifts of *lurv* in rl, you can let them keep the XP and just convert the amount into your bank account. Four players level up to #2 and that's 400cp for your personal inventory. You can use this money to provide items to players. Otherwise, rely on campaigns and their explorations to equip them.
Buying back, not just simply half price--must negotiate so the DM can acquire some good items to hand out to epic players.
See coinage.
Crafted items bought by the DM can be copied by the DM for supplying the realm. You can share this with a craftlan guild to fill their purse.
