DM Guide

All DMs and Trial DMs running games for us need to know a few basic rules and guidelines. Remember we need to be considerate of the consequences of our DM choices on other DMs and players. We share this world and community.

All of our DMs are also an official part of our staff. As you surely noticed we call them “Keepers”. Beside the privilege to run games the role of a Keeper also comes with some other features that have to be handled responsibly.

First of all, Keepers represent the Lighthouse server and are therefore especially required to uphold the values that are outlined in our Code of Conduct and be models to the players in this regard. Interactions in text channels should also hold true to the same respectful way of interacting which is outlined in the Code of Conduct.

Staff members also are called to try to de-escalate situations of conflict that arise in text and sessions. Whether they are a player, DM or just spectator in such sessions should not matter in this task.

Further we require staff members even more than regular members to point out loopholes within our systems and rules instead of abusing them.

## What to Know

1. **Luskan.** Anything that explicitly affects Luskan or the Guild needs to be run by Founders. For example: An NPC joining the town after a game, a building being constructed in town, a portal or dungeon being found in town. When running games that take place in or around Luskan, please remember to consult maps and available resources to ensure that you are utilizing locations correctly.
2. **Forgotten Realms Canon.** Please use canon lore as your starting point, the Forgotten Realms wiki is a great resource. This map details the larger Sword Coast region around Luskan, and our immediate surroundings.
3. **Encounter Builders.** Kobold Fight Club is a fabulous online tool, that allows you to enter your players levels, and match up monsters to them, allowing you to view difficulty. We highly recommend it; Check it out here.
4. **Homebrew.** While we do not allow homebrew on the server, we do allow for re-skinning, re-flavouring, and the combination of multiple creatures' stat blocks in order to achieve what you may be hoping for. DMs are also able to add class levels to creatures. See 'Monsters with Classes' from the *Dungeon Master's Guide*.
5. **House Rules.** We don’t want to stifle DM creativity, and DMs can use and create house rules in their games so long as the changes they make aren’t disruptive to game balance or fairness. Please include them in your adverts. A short description works best, such as: ‘House Rules: Scroll Mishap Table’
6. **Adventure Hooks in RP.** One suggestion that some DMs have found to be helpful is to plant the adventure hook in-character in an RP channel, giving active role players a sort of early warning that the game is opening if these are the kinds of players you’re looking for.
7. **Travel in a Session.** We tend to hand-wave making players spend DTP to travel within a game, however they must still do so in instances such as paying to use a teleportation circle. Chartering a ship is fine, but if player are manning the ship themselves, a player character only counts towards the crew if they have proficiency in Water Vehicles or Navigator’s Tools. A ship requires a minimum number of skilled crew members as shown in the table in the *Dungeon Master's Guide*. Skilled hirelings need to be recruited to reach the minimum required crew.

## Trial DMs

Here’s where you’ll develop your skills for pace, story, NPCs, creatures and rolling with the flow when your players turn the tables on you.

1. Trial DM is a temporary position. Once you have run at least 3 games, and some players and/or staff members are able to vouch for the quality of your games, we will look at promoting you to the role of Keeper. This is simply to demonstrate to us that you are competent enough, and have a good enough understanding of Challenge Ratings, overall game balance, and are a good fit for the staff.
2. Trial DMs must be approved by the existing staff members. If you are interested in becoming one, simply message one of us!
3. Trial DMs must have played in at least one game on the server.
4. Trial DMs must have their sessions signed off with a Founder or Keeper to run them. This is simply for us to double check difficulty, CR, and reward balance.
5. Trial DMs can only run single session games.
6. Trial DMs can only run sessions below level 10.
7. Trial DMs must run games without world altering events.
8. Trial DMs can only reskin monsters with DM or Staff approval.
9. Trial DMs can supervise any downtime activity for PCs level 10 and below.
10. Trial DMs cannot add class levels to monsters.

## Full DMs

DMs must be able to show they can run balanced games for appropriate levels, and must be knowledgeable of the 5e system, rules and play style of Luskan. DM status is approved by Founders.

1. DMs can run one shots, multi-session games or campaigns.
2. DMs can run any level range in a game.
3. DMs can re-skin monsters without approval.
4. DMs can run games that may take place within Luskan. If a campaign you have planned may affect the city, run the plot points by staff.
5. DMs can add class levels to monsters.

## Running a Game

As a DM, you are free to run your games in any format you choose. Common formats include Theater of the Mind (TotM), conducted entirely in a voice chat and game lobby, Roll20, the server's primarily used online virtual tabletop; or a combination of the two.

Once you’re in the session, it’s efficient to ask players to change their Roll20 nicknames to their character name and their Passive Perception. E.g., Mollymauk PP10 | AC 13.

In Roll20, ask them to add their names and HP to their tokens.

Should a player unfortunately have to leave before the game has concluded it is possible that you as the DM allow for their character to be "jaegered". That means another player controls the PC for the purposes of combat. If this is the case the PC still earns the full XP for being at risk in combat. The player only earns the DTP for the time they were present in the game.

It is also valid to have the PC depart when the player does for purposes like their character's safety or clarity of combat situations.

### Advertising your game

The format of a game announcement is as follows:

```
@here
<Session Name>
<post a short synopsis of your game's premise>

Time: <date, time, and timezones>
Lobby #: <the number of the lobby you will use; try to avoid clashes with other scheduled games>
Level Range: <the minimum and maximum level of characters you will accept>
Number of Players: <the minimum and maximum size of the party>
Tone: <the atmosphere of the game; ex.: dark, light-hearted, adventure, etc.>
Focus: <what the players can expect from the session's play; ex.: combat, RP, survival, etc.>
Content Warning: <if necessary; potentially triggering content or sensitive topics>
Difficulty: <see "Game Difficulty" below>
Estimated Time: <how long you expect the session to run>
Hosted On: <typically includes Roll20 / Discord / Theater of the Mind>
House Rules: <server-wide rule of Bonus Action Potions, as well as any rules you plan to use in your games personally>
To Join: <info you want/need from player signups; typically includes: session name, character name, race, class levels, any anything else you may want>

```

Once you've written your announcement, post it in **#game-announcements**.

#### Game Difficulty

The difficulty of a game is determined by how perilous a DM judges the session to potentially be. The standard rating system that we use, as well as examples of what they could mean, are as follows:

* **Easy.** Success is almost certainly guaranteed. Only drastic bad luck and bad decisions may turn the tables.
* **Medium.** Success is likely. Bad luck and bad decisions may still lead to success with smart playing and RP.
* **Hard.** Success is uncertain. Good choices, thinking fast, and a readiness for anything will likely see you to success but bad luck and mistakes may catch up with you.
* **Deadly.** The odds are not in your favor. Careful planning and good choices are necessary. Mistakes will have dire consequences and some luck can go a long way.
* **Lethal.** Getting out alive is often the best you can hope for. Expect intense difficulty, high chance of casualties, and the odds to be stacked against you.

### Loot

Common sense is king. Loot, gold and magic items should be level appropriate. We have a set of guidelines for this that uses a Rarity Point system to calculate the maximum amount of magic items for a single session based on average party level. These are guidelines and DMs may step beyond these bounds but they should be often for exceptional games, multi-session games, or in other rare instances.

In addition there are specific restrictions on certain magic items, please see the Magic Item spreadsheet for more information.

It’s up to the DM's discretion if everyone gets loot, or if the loot is much more RP based and may not be exact numbers for everyone, for example, in a party of 5, perhaps 1 or 2 items and the rest is gold. This is fully up to DMs. At the same time, not every game should include items, gold and experience are reward enough encouraged for low level or short games. Not every 5 hour session should include a hoard at the end, but most longer sessions on multi-session dungeon runs should probably include one.

The rewards that are given should make sense to the session. A bunch of wolves won’t have a ton of gold, or magic items on them.

Players can request a solo quest for magic item crafting supplies, per our crafting guidelines, see the Downtime Guide.

### After a session

A session log must be formatted as follows:

```
Game: <game name>
Game Time: <game length>
In-Game Time: <in game time>
APL: <average party level>

Description:
<What happened here>

Players & Rewards:
<player mention> as <character>, Items: <item>, GP: <gp>

XP: <amount> (if more than one, list here)
DTP: <amount> (if more than one, list here)

DM Rewards: <character> lvl <character level> receives DMXP <XP>, DMGP <GP>, DMDTP <dtp>, DM Token <if applicable>

```

## DM Rewards

We incentivize and reward DMing here, after all, it’s a lot of work!

DMing earns you DTP at the same rate as players (increasing at high levels), gold and exp for characters of your choosing, called DMXP. The character and DMXP must be stated in the session log. You may split DM XP between multiple PCs. DMXP allows a person who mostly runs sessions to remain competitive with their peers. Tables for rewards are below.

These numbers are derived from level advancement in the *Dungeon Master's Guide*. If your DMXP calculation leaves you with a fraction, round it up. E.g: 1322.25 XP becomes 1323.

Once your character has reached the level range of 17, 18, 19, or 20, they cannot advance to the next level or gain their next boon through DMXP. In order to properly level up or gain their next boon, they must participate in a session.. This is to encourage high level characters to have a voice and real character development throughout their growth.

### DM Treasure Tokens

In addition to gold and XP rewards for DMing, DMs accrue tokens that allow them to acquire magic items for their characters.

DMs accrue 1 token per game run (so long as the game is at least 4 hours in length). They may then spend these to roll on the corresponding magic items table and pick one of the rolled items to award to one of their characters. Common magic items can be picked instead of rolled for. The character awarded the item must meet the minimum level for that table.

DM treasure tokens should be recorded alongside DTP.

## Downtime

We operate using a system known as DTP or Downtime Points. DTP represents essentially ‘time credits’, with a single DTP being 1 day, and 5 DTP being 1 week.

These are earned by playing or DMing in sessions, at a rate of 5 per hour, and 2 for partial hours.

They are a way of quantifying and tracking anything that states it requires time, for instance, crafting, scribing a spell into your book for example.

See our Downtime Guide.