1. Always learn the rules. if you don't know them, then the player probably will, and screw you over.
2. In Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, they decided to make a page dedicated to grappling rules, but here's what you really need to know:
- To start a grapple, you need to make a melee touch attack as a standard action. Starting a grapple provokes an attack of opportunity, unless you have feats that say otherwise.
- Creatures 2 size categories larger than you can't be grappled.
- An opposed strength check is no action at all to establish a hold. This will be your STR bonus + D20+ grapple roll (and any misc modifiers) vs the player's.
- If the player succeeds in grappling, the opponent cannot move, and can only make opposed STR checks (as above) to get out of the grapple.
- While the player is grappling their opponent, each turn they succeed in holding the grapple (both player and opponent have to make a grapple check each round), they deal their unarmed weapon damage to their opponent.
- While grappling, you are flat footed to other opponents.
- If you lose an opposed grapple check while holding on to a foe, your foe automatically escapes.
3. Rule 0 anything that seems unfeasible, even if it is a fantasy game. Rule 0 means that something simply doesn't exist, or can't be done.
4. Watch out for power gamers. This would be people who can do crazy amounts of damage and are also hard to kill.
5. In spite of power gamers, there are also efficient gamers, realize the difference. Efficient gamers are good with what they have in terms of powers/spells/feats. Power gamers are unusually godlike.
6. Being creative in RPGs as a DM usually trumps intelligence, although admittedly some common sense and basic math is required.
7. Status effects are a powerful thing in most games. Utilize these rarely. Poison is most common. Level drain/Stat drain is VERY rare. The latter has a huge capibility to kill ANY character.
8. If there is something small that the book doesn't specify that the player wants to do in terms of non combat, rule in their favor.
9. Good DMing/GMing requires practice, some can pull stories and plot hooks out of their asses, some need massive amounts of notes. I have done both in moderation, but choose what's right for you.
10. Make it quirky and fun. nothing like something unusual and fun to hit the players from left field to make it a good game.
11. DM PCs are usually frowned upon. My first and best one however, was a dwarf that was fully functional about 15% of the time due to penalties from perpetual inebration.
12. Decide before you make anything on the game whether you want to be realistic in terms of exp/gold, or be generous. I usually start a D&D 3.5 game with level 3 characters, and 2k gold instead of what the book says to give them. With Warhammer fantasy, I let them have an additional advancement(or talent) to the ones they get at character creation, along with 10 gold/thrones.
14. To know the rules, you need copies of books. Ask the guys for ebooks or hard copies.
15. Some things you need to address when you create a custom world:
- How many nations are there?
- What is their geography made of?
- What race rules them? (There are few melting pot locales in medival fantasy)
- What is the races/nations ideology?
- How do those races/nations view other nations?
- What is an external/internal conflict with the nations?
Also, have fun. Hope that wasn't too encumbering.
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Incidentally, most of these rules also apply if you're writing your own story/fanfic. ^_^