So I started making sure the treasure-to-monsters ratio was solid by the end of the night.

This was my bad habit. Life in unexpected, and in a game the unexpected is desirable. You don’t want to know that every urn your character kicks apart will have 1d6 GP in it. You don’t want to know that every monster you kill will have a lair a few steps away with a pile of bones and that Flaming Dagger you asked the DM for earlier.

So I’ve worked on it and things are unequivocally better. There’s a reason we wrap Christmas presents, you know?

For my Buffy game it was easier. I had a weekly planner and noted down the weather, just a line or two, every day. That governed the weather for the game.

I used to have the same problem you had. always forget the date. But since I did send my players on a quest to retrieve a weapon before a specified date, they remind me every session what the date is

weather is something I need to learn and think about

“Great, simple D&D advice from Gnome Stew: To improve your game, run a game. http://is.gd/Nj11”

For what it’s worth, I’ve learned that one of the simplest things to do for a campaign is to buy a spiral bound notebook and just write down actions as they happen in the game. Short one liners, nothing too complex. To help with dates, I try to put the game date and the real date next to each other. A game may be 1 or 2 pages, but at least I have a compact log of what happened. I also usually write up a 1 page agenda/outline for the game which effectively serves as a form of checklist of what I’ve planned (which also indirectly helps with pacing of the game).

And as for the “Armchair GM”, don’t forget that we do need to take a break once and awhile and be players too.

It’s truly remarkable how robust the “fun” aspect of the game is. You can break just about every rule and the game keeps moving.

So with that said, my advice to those who are waist deep with GMing duties is to plan an end to each of your campaigns and then take a break. If you can be a player for a bit great! If not, well let the group be on hold until you are ready to GM again (which when I tell my groups “Fine, we just won’t game until I am ready to GM again.” results in a volunteer suddenly stepping forward!).

Good advice, Matthew.

I’ve always hated the armchair GM, so I’m working the next campaign up, and should be well into it when Gen Con rolls around. Yay!

BTW, my D&D 3.5 weak points were selecting spells for the opponents, and calculating XP. As a GM, I avoided casters specifically so I wouldn’t have to read pages of spells. And I just started guesstimating XP, which also let me manage level gains around the storyline.

I do like the idea of tailoring encounters and treasures to the PCs. I start PCs out in my campaigns with one very minor magic item, a legacy or family heirloom, if you will. It usually has some distinctive property about it that sets it apart from the run of the mill magic items listed in the manuals. In return, I ask them to provide me with a modest background and at least one goal they have for their PC (i.e. to become rich and powerful and rule my own duchy, to discover obscure magic and create my own unique magic items, to free my sister from the slavers who took her three years ago, etc). This enables me to weave character-specific motivations and hooks into my adventures and, generally, keeps my players interested and on their game.

Oh, and I don’t play 4E precisely for the characteristics you mentioned. Everything is over scripted. PCs get treated like spoiled rich kids who develop special superpowers just for breathing. It’s too much! Give me a character that earns everything he gets and has to invest skill or feat points and experience to develop a new ability over time. That’s the recipe for adventure!

And I’m with you on the “know I should include individual background/challenge” elements, but never find a good place to work them in. Part of it is the setting, but a lot of it is spending too much time trying to make good fights and get CR right. (Which still doesn’t work very well…)

The way I got around that, and the advice I would like to pass on, is that rather than trying really hard to remember to add weather and dates, I created a template for my sessions that included a box for Weather, and for Date. This way, every time I wrote a scene, there were those two boxes looking up at me, and requiring me to fill them in.

If you don’t write your scenes electronically, you can make a little card with a list of things you need to include, and put it as a bookmark in your core rulebook.

The bottom line is, that the chance you are going to make yourself remember some of these things, is slim. What you remember behind the screen compared to the next day is quite different. So rather than try to force your brain to hold that detail, as well as 1000 other things going on in your life, leave yourself a breadcrumb trail. Create a reminder or tool that helps you overcome the things you forget.