TOPIC: feedback for Dungeon Masters

As a DM, I was wondering how people felt about their DMs.

What did you see that you liked? What could we do better?

In your comments, please remember we don't design the rooms. We just try to make the experience enjoyable within the rules of the game. Please use constructive criticism.

(As a DM for the hardcore ROOM OF ORBS and THE CRUSHING WALL, I felt nearly all players enjoyed the experience. While I made my share of mistakes, I felt really good about the positive comments from the people who played my rooms. A few people were grumpy, but most of you were GREAT!!!)

Note: All this is said as a first time player, so I have no experience with previous years.

On the whole, the DMs were helpful and generally explained the rooms well to us. There was one notable exception. The DM that was that exception seemed to take his job too seriously and the entire group felt extra rushed in that particular room because of the DM's attitude. It was the first and only room we got involved in combat in and all of us were new players, so it took us a bit longer to get into the swing of it. That didn't seem to help matters at all. I guess what I'm saying is that in general, DMs need to be careful. Some of us haven't done this sort of thing before and it takes us a bit to get it sorted out. It puts players off if they feel that the DM is being short with them and it may prevent players from coming back.

But in the knowledge that DMing is, in general, a relatively thankless job, I just want to say thank you to all the DMs on the Tower Run on Saturday.

I thought overall the DMs did a great job. One DM per room was definately a good idea. If a DM is just so-so, at least you are not stuck with him/her your whole adventure. I found most DMs were helpful if we were stuck on a puzzle.

I had the chance will at Gencon to play through the top and bottom muttiple times and during my 5 times through i had good experinces with all the dms. They did a good job of helping us know when our time was almost up letting us know that now might be the time for rash actions as we had mearly two minutes left in rooms and all. I had only one semi weird experince with a dm and it being in hardcore mode can understand. Seing how the event is now over i will explain. we where going down into the crypt and in the first narrow passage room we had our fighter in the front to be the meat sheild of the group. Our dm belived this to be a bad idea and reward us with a new trap in the middle of the passage that dealt 10 damgae to our fighter. We quickly switched the rouge to the front two find no more traps. Then we found a symbol of what appeared to be healing on the wall our fighter attempted to stick his hand in it and was almost killed in room one if it wasn't for some rapid healings. Now this did make us all the more carefull and we did go on to complete the crept so it was fun its just a little bit hard switching from dm to dm. As i give this as and example. One dm may expect or want to see ceratin things from a group and another other things. It would be good if maybe we could assign one dm to each party to escort them through the whole adventure. Although i realize that would be harder and more information on the dm. 7 rooms wound't be that hard to learn and they can carry notes and lights with them. THis would also help as I heard of multiple partys cheating and not taking damge they where suppose to take becuase the next dm did not know about it and the previous dm did not have time becuase of the next dm was being rushed by new people comming in. Just and idea i really apprectiated your hard work though and all around you did a good job. I hope to be able to help u out next year!

It used to be that one DM guided a group through the entire adventure. Trust me, it is better having one DM per room. There is simply too much for one person to remember about each room.

The DM also resets the rooms with the help of the bluehands. One DM per room made the resets very easy and consistant. The new DM was not coming into a room only to find the group befor him had not reset a trap or prop. I played the first year and volunteered the second year, and 1 dm per room is the way to go.

Baldamir

Without any doubt multiple DM's is the way to go. Last year our DM was not the greatest. I know he was a volunteer and all, but it really did give us a bad experience for the event. This year pretty much eliminated one "bad" DM ruining the whole night.