DMing at Speed

The next step up the scale of dungeon mastering is to perform all the skills the DM has at speed.  That is to say, without having to waste time puzzling over something the player has just said, or pondering a decision that should be made in a second or two, or relying overmuch upon the written rules ~ and if a rule does need to be consulted, it should be familiar enough to the DM that it can be glanced at in less than 10 seconds to find the exact sentence and order of words that applies in this exact situation.

I am well aware that many DM turn to "rulings over rules" because this gives them the privilege of never having to look anything up, which they will claim saves them time.  In fact, it costs them far more time than they can imagine, since with this approach the rules change constantly, causing even non-rule players to eventually feel compelled to speak up, which wastes the DMs time as things are retconned or arguments pour forth for an hour or two.  Even more time is wasted as players don't show up, feeling that the DM does not care, or that there is no purpose to the game, or time wasted in that players drag their feet during play because again, they don't care and there is no purpose to the game.

You don't need this.

Autocratic decisions only undermine the fluid, immediate flow of play, which is based on everyone knowing what the answer is before the answer is needed.  Baseball, for instance, has a problem in the structure of the game in that an umpire is needed to tell balls from strikes ~ and inherently this causes problems.  Without an umpire, an argument about a pitch can wreck a game, as most who play a lot of baseball can testify.  With an umpire, everyone understands that there is just so long that you're allowed to argue, just so much you're allowed to say and that at some point before the game is hopelessly dragged out, a point when the umpire will end the argument, forcing you to shut up or actively kicking you out of the game.  And because everyone knows this, the emotion that is tolerated briefly is not allowed to spin out.  This knowledge causes most players to never argue, speeding the game up immensely.

If the players know ahead of time how I'm going to rule on a particular rule, they don't need to argue it with me, or waste time asking questions that they learn won't get the answer they wish for.  If the players know the rules, and I follow them, there is far less need for rulings.  In fact, in a typical game, I usually need to make a "ruling" ~ a decision on something that has never come up before ~ about once an hour.  Often, I can go through a whole night without making a ruling at all.  That is because the rules are accepted and we all agree.

This saves enormous time and enormous emotional trouble.  The game moves quickly and the players feel they have as much control over the rules as I have, correcting me if I've forgotten something ~ which in fact keeps me on a straight and narrow and gives the players greater trust and respect for me as a DM.  Over all, this gives me a legitimacy that ruling-focused DMs can only dream of.

Having the ability to DM at speed does not come overnight.  It requires work and positivity, dedication and a practiced memory.  The goal is not to improve your knowledge, which is contained in your head and in the books, but to improve your efficiency in obtaining that knowledge.  This means shifting more of that knowledge from stale sources and into your head, or adding cues to your knowledge so that if you have to look something up, you have a clear index that you can mentally employ.

Learn efficiency and you don't need 90% of this crap in front
of you.

For example, learning the page number of a book will help you locate a particular table or description, but it is also helpful to have as near a perfect grasp of the order of the entire book as it is written.  When I was using the old DM's Guide a lot (no more, as I've replaced most of it with my own material), I was perfectly aware of the order of all the pages in the book, so that I knew from flipping the book open at an particular point, whether I had to move backwards or forwards through the book, and how far.  This was very helpful in searching for magic items or spells, which have too many types and are searched far too rarely to remember page numbers.  However, if I were looking for an item, I knew to open the book about three-quarters of the way through, which would plop me into potions, scrolls or staves, whereupon I could find any specific magic item from hundreds of others in about three to five seconds ~ without knowing the page number.

This physical relationship to the books (knowing with my fingertips how to select fifty, a hundred or a hundred and fifty pages at once), saved me endless time during play.  It was acquired by forcing myself to look up everything on my own, when I wasn't playing but I was working with the rules in my design.  I would purposefully close the book each time to force myself to look it up again, since I had oodles of time to do so.  This proved very effective in teaching me the format and order of the book, a skill I still have though I have little reason to use it now.

Another drill a DM can perform is to master the hit dice, damage, sizes, intelligences and armor classes of all the monsters, particularly the hundred or so that come up a lot.  There's no need to remember how intelligent a sea lion is; those don't come up much, unless you're running underwater and then you should know the week ahead of time that you're going to include one.  Concentrate on the humanoids, the giants, the animals, the common dungeon beasts and the undead; all of the "big bads" can be prepared for outside the game.  What's wanted is an ability to dredge this information up from your mind so that you're not reaching for a book if you want to throw a quick giant badger or a party of gnolls at a moment's notice.  You shouldn't need a book for these sorts of encounters.

Have a friend drill you on these numbers for an hour or two, once in awhile.  How many hit dice, how many appearing, what is their choice weapon, name off their special attacks and how much damage those special attacks do, how many attacks does the monster get and so on.  Do it and do it until you know these monsters cold, until you can't be tripped up on the details, something that shouldn't take you more than a few months to learn the main ones, if you're committed.

Likewise, pick a monster in your head, assign an armor class to your enemy and then roll a d20.  Roll it over and over, thinking to yourself, "hit," "hit," "miss," "hit," "miss" and so on, randomly assigning adjustments while you're doing it.  A bow, fired on the run, at such-and-such range, with this skill or that, etcetera.  Do it with every nuance and circumstance you can think of, giving yourself ten or fifteen rolls per circumstance, to give yourself a good handle on the numbers in your head.  The active use of the die will give you a motivation to add numbers at random, until someone else can shout modifiers at you and you'll do the calculation in your head before the die stops rolling.

Let yourself be drilled on spells, too, by a friend or even by someone who has no idea if you're right or wrong.  If you're not certain, look the spell up, then close the book.  Do this every time you feel a doubt about your being right.  Eventually, you won't feel any doubts.  You'll be right.

These drills will work with any part of the game ... and they are no different than the tricks and efforts you took to get an A in school.  Only now, you're not doing it to make a teacher or your parents happy, or because you think it might matter to your future (though it didn't).  Now, you're doing it because you're shaving seconds off your time while DMing, getting the numbers right, honing your memory and making it possible for you to answer five questions from five players in under 15 seconds.  How much damage does this weapon do, what's the range on this spell, what is their armour class, how long does it take to find this in my backpack, how long does it take to load a light crossbow ... these questions go on and on and they fill enormous amounts of time during a session ~ if you don't have the answers.  When you do have the answers, you don't need tables, you don't need a DM's screen to look up weapon damage and to hit tables, and you can answer the questions in as little time as it takes to say two to eight sixty feet five three rounds two rounds.

It is that simple.  Learn to DM at speed and you will massively increase the pace and desirability of your game.