Share your best practices for refereeing which would enhance the gaming experience (i.e. what is fun for you). Make sure it’s a single concrete thing which the reader can apply to their table just by reading your post. (i.e. don’t be vague).
I’ll go first:
Avoid meta-game talk with players as much as possible. Don’t talk about ability scores, or ask questions like “what was your dragon breath save?” etc. If possible, don’t let them even know the rules. (This is most possible with total newbies.)
This recommendation isn’t a 100% of the time one - but as a referee I find it very useful to rephrase the players’ intended actions, and most importantly, intended outcome back to them to make sure you’re both on the same page.
You can elide this for many, many well-known and obvious actions/outcomes - rolling to hit, listening at a door, etc. But it’s very useful to align with play intent and have a spot for clarification on either side if necessary.
I do quite the opposite. Sometimes it’s inevitable, particularly when people start playing a new game, but I’ve found that the game gets better when the players understand all the cogs which make it run. It should never trample the primacy of fiction, but each player should be able to fully run their character on their own: know how their spells or abilities work, what the words there mean (especially for more esoteric terms, like the old saves) and how to use the gaming tool which is the character (or a characters stable) at its best.
In my experience, while players with zero system knowledge tend to focus more on the fiction and players with a modicum of knowledge tend to ask a lot of “meta”^[I don’t like the term, but that’s a long argument for another thread] questions, players who are proficient with a system tend to focus again on the fiction while making the game run smoother. And they take better decisions, which is what this hobby is about at least for me.
On the same line, the single trick I’ve got most enjoyment from during my games is throw away the GM screen. I’ve removed any barriers between me and the players, completely removed from the table the whole concept of “fudging rolls” and made sure all the rule material is fully available to anyone who has a doubt. And what if anyone tries to read my prep? I caught a guy once, told him to either stop cheating or leave my table for good and it never happened again.
There’s other good stuff, but this is probably the single trick which improved my games the most.
If I can convince a group of players, I want to try the opposite (I’ve read somewhere Gygax (pbuh) did something like that. I want to hide myself completely behind dome obstacle, so that the players only hear my voice, and are forced to look each other this way, instead of mine.
If I am thinking of the same thing you’re referencing, its an anecdote from Mike Mornard that they would often play in Gygax’s cramped office, and to hide his maps he would use a filling cabinet.
I believe Mornard described it as a surreal experience, but I know that this wasn’t a universal technique employed by Gary.
I agree that I would like more players looking to each other, and speaking to each other instead of always first place communicating with the referee.
Having a caller solves some of this, but it requires viligance and isn’t a be-all-end-all.
I’m also very pro-blackbox and GM screen for what its worth - on both sides of the screen.
Plagiarize.
Let no one’s work evade your eyes.
Remember why the god lord made your eyes, so don’t shade your eyes
Just plagiarize, plagiarize plagiarize
Only of course be sure to be calling it “Research”
No matter what you are looking to do, be it a castle layout or a township or a whole country, SOMEONE has already done the work and published it somewhere. Most of my own games are set in Mystara with the numbers filed off and the logo painted over, most of the character classes in my BECMI games have options from either Threshold or the various B/X hacks/supplements I’ve found over the years on DTRPG, and most of the time the only thing I’m using a module I bought for is the maps inside. The players can’t tell if something was handmade or grabbed from a book 99% of the time, so don’t stress and spend so much brain energy when you could just snag some stuff and make it fit what you want to do.
I’m quite the hard opposite. I like acknowledging it’s a game, openly discussing numbers, and letting players plan external to the fiction. But I also encourage roleplay quite a bit, and I do keep knowledge of “in universe” things to only what’s in front of the pc’s and what they have already seen. As the person earlier in the thread, I also do all dice rolls publicly, but I don’t necessarily say what the rolls are for. I keep the fiction more tidy and less “meta” as I think that’s what matters most.
The absolute best practice I have implemented was the “Golden Rule” (coined by GFC, don’t know who first shared it though). Which is, at the end of a session always ask the players what they plan to do next.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, has improved the experience more than implementing that. Enables you to always prepare a good session.
There are quite a few other great tips, but nothing is at this level for me.
I do the plagarizing as the standard implementation when it comes to hexcrawl design; following the example of Gary (pbuh) as he did with the Outdoor Survival.
So, whenever I need a hexmap, I fly over to simpubs.org and based on the theme I’m interested in, I choose a hex-and-counter game and re-purpose its map for my end. I highly recommend this to everyone. It gives you a nice hand-drawn hexmap, and gives you more time to actually play.
I haven’t found a great way for phrase this, but one thing that has improved by Refereeing a lot is focusing on talking less. This doesn’t mean say nothing or just let things go without any intervention. But it does mean focusing less on narrating everything through and instead more on posing questions that present problems and then letting players figure it out from there.
I am constantly trying to tell myself to be ok with giving the players room to talk/breath, because as a player a constantly ON referee really wears me out. Especially if they are the kind that enumerate what we could do before we’ve even gotten a chance to think through the situation.
Different folks will need different levels of support there, but I know I can’t stand it when al the GM effectively recreates a choose your own adventure every room we get into.
There’s this thing which can be imported from (foreign language) teaching; 20/80 ratio. If in a session, referee-talking-time is more than 20%, you should cut it down to size. Player-talking-time should be at around 80%.