The way I make that work is to have the players responsible for keeping track of everything else. I currently don't have any more to keep track of for any campaign than a published adventure or rough outline of my own devising and a piece of scratch paper, which is mostly for temporary tracking of things like monster hp, but also gets short reminders written down like "Unidentified Oil on Belgar's sheet = oil of sharpness" or "Party just defeated mummy - has not rested or healed" so that I don't get lost when a player says they identify something during a rest, or when starting the next session. My whole philosophy on DMing can be summed up as an effort to maximize the results of minimum effort, so that all my "I'm going to do something D&D related outside of actual play session time" time can be spend on the frivolous extras like painting minis, finding music to play during sessions, and the like. I keep track of everything I need to by way of making sure that I have the least possible number of things I need to keep track of. It really helped me learn to shift the pacing around the table and keep everyone included. I wrapped up what I was doing with that player or players and flipped it over and moved to the other players that were not involved. If I was dealing with anyone at the table longer than it took the timer to run out.
I also at the end of game note if I had any quiet players and make sure that the next session I go to them early in the game. If that is not the case here is my player interaction tip.Įach game session I pick one player that I will interact with a portion of their background something in game. Sometimes quiet players just are quiet because they enjoy being an active voyeur in the game. If you have a fellow DM at the table ask them to sit close by and tap them of their experience when you need to look up rules in the roll of (DM assistant)Īs to your quiet player. I see a lot of good advice here but I might have missed it if someone already said it.īuy a Combat Tracker and let one of the players announce combat order as the turns pass.