Ten Tips for Beginning DMs linked on Biblyon Broadsides

“… if there are no stakes, then there’s no real victory… The best campaigns are based on the players interacting with the environment, and if they have no real choice, then there’s no real interaction.” These are great tips for any game master, not just Dungeon Masters. Regarding the first tip, “don’t fudge”, I’ve long come to the point where I prefer not to use a shield to hide die rolls. It’s both a lot harder to fudge die rolls when the players know what they were, and it’s a lot more exciting to see how close the monster came to succeeding or failing.