Advice for improving my gming style

Hello everyone, I've long been the gm for most of my tabletop experience (almost a couple years now), and have decided now to record and publish on youtube the sessions of the dragon age rpg I'm running. As such, I would appreciate some advice on how to improve my gming ability to a) make the viewing experience more enjoyable and b) make the sessions themselves more enjoyable for my players. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwP2GUboCf5" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwP2GUboCf5</a>... There are currently videos up explaining a bit bout each character if your interested, but the ones I'd recommend watching are the videos of session 7, 8 and 9 (to give advice on my gming style anyway). Cheers!

Alright, I'll edit this a bit later when I have some time to really analyze things (so check back sometime in the future). But the first thing I can tell you is, christ you have too many players. Like, points of order are kind of an important thing. I'm about 25 minutes in, and it took nearly 10 minutes just to figure out how people were opening a single box, not because the box was complex, but because so many people were talking, and more importantly, talking over you, that when it came time to give out effects, you had to stop just to determine where people actually were standing. My advice is, seriously, don't do this. Bring the hammer down a bit, especially when you've got as many players as you do. Let them know that there's just too many voices for anything to be clear when everyone is trying to talk and crack jokes and you're trying to get solid information on who is where and doing what. Make a point of order, make sure everyone is paying attention to you and quiet so they can hear you, and here's the big part; ask them specifically about the information you need to know. If they're in a scene where how close to a box they are matters, you need to establish this, firmly, before anything else. "James is turning the key. I want to know exactly where everyone else is, and what they're doing.", and then a quick word from each player one at a time, and then move on. Also, it may just be the way I'm used to doing things, but it seems that fully half of a 3:30 session was digressions and side conversation, meaning that if it were, say, me running this session exactly as-is, it would only last about an hour and change. I would suggest asking the players to spend less time talking to one-another as players, and more time in character. I think this whole group's play could really benefit from spending the majority of the actual events in character. I mean, an entire interrogation scene and not a single back-and-forth between the player asking the questions and the DM? I'm not sure I get that. Then again, there is the entire possibility all my criticism will be responded to with "Well that's just not our style", to which I'd have to ask; What exactly are you looking for advice on? EDIT: Also, holy party conflict, Batman. Seriously, quash that shit soon, man. You've got player characters physically threatening each other over nothing.

First off, thanks for taking the time. To your first point now, the thing with having this many players is that, the session your refering to is actually the first time they've all turned up xD Usually about half of them do, before I "merged" the groups, I ended up cancelling most sessions due to lack of players, since i've merged them though not a session has been cancelled. The thing with the players talking over each other IS a major problem I've been having, what exactly would you suggest? Maybe me enforcing OOC being text based and voice being a in character affair only? (barring breaks and what not of course) In regards to your edit, I have spoken to the players and told them if outbursts continue they will be removed from the game for the remainder of the session, and another outburst leading to a simple removal from the game in general.

My first suggestion would be to encourage everyone to actually be in-character more. Talk to eachother IC, keep table talk down. You're dealing with a huge group, this wouldn't be as much of an issue with like, 3 or 4 players. Since there's so many voices, you need to funnel it down so only the most important stuff gets time. Again, I can tell you only how I personally do things, and my personal style involves a lot if in-character roleplaying, and a lot of specific questions from myself. Things like "Ok, while he's doing that, what is everyone else doing?", etc. Especially when it comes to scenes like the interrogation, there's just no way 7 or 8 people are going to have a conversation with one person. Bear in mind, this should also reflect on the NPCs too. You have this wounded, disarmed assassin who is literally surrounded by about 8 people with weapons all discussing whether or not to kill her right there. That NPC shouldn't be calm and collected, she should be terrified to all hell. But really, what I got out of that whole interrogation scene was this weird roundabout where it started with players arguing about whether to kill her or not, then mirgrated to the players actually threatening one-another, then back to whether or not it would be ok to let her go and maybe just maim her, then just taking her weapons, then actually letting her go and giving back her weapons. Like, I get that players sometimes discuss things and come to a different conclusion than their initial one, but that was 10 minutes of discussion that shouldn't have happened at all. Again, I've got to run and am happy to talk more about this later, but you'll likely hear opinions from someone who isn't me too.

I haven't watched the video yet, so just a quick comment for now regarding party conflict: I personally dislike PvP in my campaigns; the characters are together for a reason, and if they decide to turn on one another there should be a VERY good reason for that as well. "I just felt like it" isn't a good reason! My Solution: ANY action taken by Character A, against Character B, is resolved not by the rules, but By The Player of Character B. Period. What this means is that if A attacks B, B can choose that A misses or hits, or fumbles, or falls, or just about anything. HOWEVER, if his choice is that A swings at B, but misses, so B swings back at A... now the ball's in A's court again! The idea here is that, if the party is truly in need of a conflict within the confines of the story, they will play it out AS a story. If it's truly necessary to have combat between the player characters, they need to resolve it in such a way that all involved agree... if they can't do so, then it isn't truly necessary to the story! This has effectively quashed (violent) PvP interactions in my games entirely (So far!) -Phnord

I'm sorry, I have not watched the videos, only bits here and there. Also, please realise that when I say "players" I am including the GM under that label. Everyone gathered around the table and participating in some fashion is a player. First, regarding PvP, did you have a Session Zero ? If not, you could have one in the middle of the campaign. It is important that everyone is on the same page (not necessarily on the same team). If you decide that you want PvP in your game, great. If you decide you don't, great. But everyone needs to have the same expectations of the campaign in order to have a smooth, conflict-free campaign (conflict-free between players, not characters). There are a few good links in Iserith's signature in the link above. I would suggest reading DM 101 . IMO, the important bits from the link are the follwing: ...as DMs, it's not really our job to push a story, drive action, or shepherd the players toward a desired outcome. 2.) Does this action (which might succeed OR fail) have a meaningful consequence? If No, don't bother asking for a check, just let them succeed or fail, based on whatever's appropriate to the circumstance. (I usually let them succeed). If Yes, proceed to 3. Also, I would suggest everyone in your group read Players 101 which spells out an easy way to encourage PC-group cohesion (" Why do I already trust them? ") and 11 Ways to be a Better Roleplayer . Both of those might be helpful.