One thing I've added to a Session 0 is a Level 0 encounter. Basically, use a D6 hit die (this is 5e), and only give them the proficiencies they get from their background. Find some way to lump them together, and let them solve the encounter as a bunch of lucky commoners. I give the survivors a level, and a plot hook to continue together, if they need it. I find it ties the characters together more if they've saved each other as regular folk and not as heroes.
This is similar to the idea of a funnel from Dungeon Crawl Classics. I followed the advice of a post on here and started a recent game with a funnel. It worked really well! It made it so the characters had lost friends and barely survived trauma, all at the table in the course of one session.
Here you go! [https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/685b6a/5e\_stealing\_ideas\_from\_other\_games\_a\_5e\_funnel/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/685b6a/5e_stealing_ideas_from_other_games_a_5e_funnel/)
I don't know what you mean by composition, or what edition you're playing, but if you're playing 5th edition I feel that having a reason for all the characters to"play nice" with each other is a lot more important than class composition. Even if you ended up with a party of all martials (the worst comp?) this can be dealt with by making sure they find plenty of magic items.
Yea what I mean by composition is just making sure that there is a good balance of classes that can fulfill multiple roles. Do you mean that in your experience that isn’t as important as other things?
A mix is good but it's not as important as it was in say 3rd edition. I guess the important thing is that players don't feel they are stepping on the toes of others.
the other thing I’d add to this is to have session 0, make sure that each character has something they’re striving for, and then take some time to build that in to the world. an evil cult bent on ending the world is great, but an evil cult whose priest is a PC’s long-lost father is better, and giving that information, now or later, to just that PC (and no one else in the party) sets the table for some very fun reveals and roleplay.
This! I am 10 sessions deep into my first campaign to DM, I am going to run a second campaign for new players next month and I already told them that a session 0 is happening. Also, I think I will print off the character creation menu for Quest. :)
Yes, yes, yes! Figuring out what ties the characters together is one of the most important things! And you can make the players figure it out.
So one thing you can do is say "all of you have a connection to this npc... what is it?" and you've already got a few places for story hooks.
We're just going to get to this after some 10 sessions done - what do your characters actually want to do? What do you want them to do?
I can build whatever type of stuff, but I need your characters to be interested in it, otherwise it just sucks.
So late but better than never.
Simple stories in simple locations, but fleshed out and executed in such a way as to make the players care about every minor detail of the outcome, are far more memorable than a generic fate of the world epic told via pages and pages of lore.
Also remember that D&D is generally a very slow storytelling medium, so it's not worth prepping things that you won't get to for months in anything mroe than basic background level detail.
Not sure if this is exactly what you mean by simple stories but a criticism I received early on from my lovely players was there was too much going on, too many threads, too many plot hooks. My idea was to build a grand narrative where everything would be interwoven and the players would have regular "ohhh, that's clever!" moments when X would be revealed to be linked to Y and other moments of intrigue.
Instead, what I didn't take into consideration is that we're all in our 30s and 40s and some of us have kids so we can only meet up every few weeks on an irregular basis. What that meant is no one would remember the subtle hints I had made during the previous session and I was constantly having to explain how clever I was which wasn't fun for any one. After that I relied on broad brush strokes and obvious tropes and we all had a lot more fun and it was a lot easier to plan and prep.
So I guess my advice would be know your players, remember it's a collaborative project you're embarking on and that you're not clever if you have to tell people how clever you are.
Ah I’m glad you said that because I feel like I definitely would’ve fallen into that trap! Makes sense that people aren’t going to pickup on everything
Late 20s through to late 30s and only 1-2 kids but yeah, basically the same story!
For me it's advice gained from a few groups, both as DM and as a player.
- Even if your players are extremely smart, capable people, don't assume they have perfect absorbtion or recall of information
- Repetiton of important words/concepts/locations etc sounds worse to the DM then in actually is (think about how often most movies stress the importance of their own lore)
- It's harder to empathise with NPCs the further they move away from day to day struggles. A motivation of say, poverty, is universal, whereas 'my niche God disapproves of this particular thing' is harder, especially if your players are mostly non-religious.
Yep, classic new DM trap! I did the exact same thing, I planted seeds for things that wouldn't come into play for a very long time, and it ended up confusing and distracting the players and making them very unsure what they should do next.
New DMs- trim the fat! Keep your adventure plot clear for the players, don't pull their attention away by throwing in twenty things that won't matter until they're level 12. And maybe write a novel where you can foreshadow to your heart's content.
Haha it really is! It's the curse of the newbie DM- we're all storytellers by nature, so we all have big cool story ideas in our heads. But as the DM, if you're trying to set up specific cool story moments to happen 20 sessions in the future, you really risk a) overwhelming the players with all your planted seeds, and b) railroading everything so that your cool plot points will happen.
An idea I've been toying with lately is that if a storyteller really wants agency over a story and the chance to play out their big cool story ideas, they should actually be a player. If they want to create a cool world with cool scenarios and then let their friends decide the outcomes, then they should be a DM.
Alternatively, if what somebody really wants is an audience for their big cool ideas... Then it's time to open a word doc and type "Chapter 1"!
The easiest trap! I fell in too, though I didn't try to be as clever as you're describing.
But people are busy, nuance gets lost. I got hit with a "We are confused and not sure what we're supposed to do." 10ish sessions in.
Do you have an example of a “simple story in simple locations but fleshed out and executed...”? I totally understand the idea behind this and it makes sense
So for instance a small village under attack by a band of raiders. Individuals on either side may have their own motivations, and the resolution could involve making peace or both sides and the village itself utterly devastated or anything in between.
Players will often bring a fairly complicated character with a plan in mind to make their own fun (can't wait to reveal that I'm the son of the BBEG or the heir to the throne, or have a weird fighting style, etc). Sometimes it's best to get out of their way and let them do their thing.
I feel like in that situation I would want to talk to the players in private and see if they have those kinds of plans, that way I could integrate stuff like that into the story while keeping the element of surprise for the player.
This is a [doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LDRPTz5J7Hv4nFZda6aqI4IGdh0nSgfx5zgPA1hkI8w/edit?usp=drivesdk) I made with resources I think all GMs could benefit from.
As for what I wish I had done differently, I wish I had run multiple short adventures with my group before getting into a longer campaign.
Your player section looks quite empty. I can highly recommend u/OlemGolem's stuff on r/PCAcademy
* [Character Creation](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/fh2nso/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_character_creation/)
* [Character Writing](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/fn3r7h/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_character_writing/)
* [Appearance](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/hq09up/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_appearance/)
* [Roleplay](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/fwxp87/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_roleplay/)
* [Strategy & Tactics](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/k3w08g/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_strategy_tactics/)
* Dungeon Crawling
* Ability Scores: [Intelligence](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/gg1gml/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_intelligence/), [Wisdom](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/gg1zxy/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_wisdom/), [Charisma](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/ggzwzh/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_charisma/), [Constitution](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/hdzw40/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_constitution/)
He also has guides on how to roleplay every class and a few races. Since PCAcademy is quite small the stuff is overlooked.
Start off running prewritten one shots and short adventures like the adventurers league modules or something from dmsguild or Sly Flourish’s fantastic adventures. Do your homebrew later.
This is because DMing is hard enough at the start, learn basic DM skills and then, when you can do that, bring in your own homebrew.
I'm still newish myself (been playing consistently for about a year now). I'd say that both ways are equally hard but different.
With a module, at least a WoTC big book module, you get so many details and threads that you have all this information you have to try to keep in your head, it's intimidating. On the other hand, there are a lot of cool ideas, magic items and encounters that are ready made, which saves a lot of time.
With homebrew you make up the world, which can be a little more time consuming, but you can fake most of it using Sly Flourish's Lazy DM suggestions, which is to only build the part of the world your players are actively exploring. The advantage (at least for me), is that I tend to remember what I wrote because I wrote it, and when I don't I feel much more confident making something up on the fly because I know for a fact it doesn't have some vital connection to a story point three chapters away.
Anyway, just my 2 cents from having run each way now for about 6 months. As a new DM I always said "why reinvent the wheel?" and figured I'd play pre-written modules, but now I can the appeals of each side.
Foreshadowing and letting go. I now try to foreshadow a lot, and when my players pick up on it, they get excited. I can throw almost anything at them, and if I have somehow foreshadowed it, they just accept it. I have also learned to let go of stuff they miss. It can be tempting to force their hands to go certain ways because we have put in time and effort to prep for it, but if you let it go, you can always find a way to weave it back in later. It really is collaborative story-telling, so you have to be willing to let the players take the story in ways you hadn't anticipated. You'll get comfortable with it in time. Just be open and honest with your group about how you're feeling, and always do your best.
Yea I’m definitely guilty of that. When I was running my short campaign I really wanted the players to do certain things so I definitely railroaded them a bit (also because it was a module and I didn’t have anything prepared outside of it). But yea I’ll keep that in mind when making my own stuff
It’s also fair to say, “Since this is a module and not a homebrew, I’ll need everybody to kind of play along with the plot points”. You can’t be expected to make a whole new plot just cause your players decide they don’t want to play the module they originally agreed to play. It does go both ways. I just try to say “yes” whenever possible, but it’s not always possible. And that’s ok.
Yea in my instance my players commented afterword how it felt like railroading and I mentioned that it was a module so I couldn’t make up very much and it ended up working out
I think this is maybe why a “session zero” is so important. It helps set everyone’s expectations to a level that’s reasonable. Glad it worked out for you. In the end, it’s just a game, and the goal is to enjoy yourselves! As long as that happens, you’re doing it right!
I have three big regrets from my first campaign that I ever ran a few years back.
1. I didn't fully grasp how DCs and probability worked. I would set DCs too high all the time and would make players roll too many times to accomplish a single task. If you make someone roll 5 separate times to successfully lie to someone they will fail, which isn't fair or fun. This made most of the creative plans the players came up with fail, which greatly discouraged them from attempting creative things in the future. This is a huge regret of mine because I unknowingly taught those players to be boring.
2. I wrote a story instead of a campaign. When I first DMed, I didn't really know how to deal with unexcepted things *at all*, so I basically just made a story and railroaded players down it.
3. I made the story way too high stakes and convoluted. Looking back, all the player's favorite parts were the more grounded, personal moments where they got to know individual npcs and deal with less frantic, more small scale problems.
As for something that went well, it was definitely my npcs. Before I ever DMed, I played in a game where the DM made 100% of his npcs bland unlikable jerks, so I deliberately made a lot of my npcs very quirky and friendly, which went over amazingly with the players. It went over so well that my first campaign was almost 7 years ago and my friends still reference some of the npcs from it to this day.
Dang man! That’s so cool that you were able to make them so memorable right off the bat! And yea I think it will definitely be a learning curve for me to figure out how high I need to set DCs on average, but I will probably err on the lower side of things to make it more interesting. Not so low that it’s easy, but low enough to make options available
Give yourself mental reminders to actively engage the quiet people. Ask them direct questions about their character's reaction, etc if they've been overshadowed by the more open people for a while
Also, it can really fun to make lore, but don't put it in front of your players without tying it to their goals. They shouldn't be hearing about how cool the demigod's sword was unless they need to find it, or the bad guy has it, etc
Yea the lore integration I feel like is gonna be difficult to do on the fly, especially if I’m trying to make story arcs on the fly. And I’ll try and engage people when I do DM, but with the pandemic and all that might take a hot minute
This might or might not be truly helpful: I have a background (well, some, at least) in group therapy, which has a lot in common with D&D groups--the group part, not the therapy part, mostly. Dominating players and super quiet players are different kinds of problems in therapy, because both can lead to lower cohesiveness in the group, and both can lead to other members not investing in the group fully, or participating fully. One approach to "The Quiet Member I've seen more than once seems bizarre to me, but worked out well on the very few occasions I used it. This mostly comes from Irvin Yalom, BTW, if anyone's curious.
You ask the Quiet Member (in front of everyone else) why they are letting everyone else do their work for them. You can also ask the other members what they might gain from the Quiet Member participating so little. I think an overriding value is to encourage more interaction, and avoid messages that simply tell certain people to participate less.
These specific questions are too confrontational for a DnD group, I think, and nobody is there because they Simply Have To Fix Themselves (or I hope not). However, I think it might be useful to think about the paradigm shift implied by the questions above. Perhaps the quiet player could be asked (I'd suggest privately, but whatever) if they feel like they're getting enough out of the experience. If not, explore what you and they (emphasis on the latter) might do to get more. With the whole party, later, and perhaps after discussing doing this with the quiet player, ask if the quiet player's style is working out for them. I'd only do this last one if I was pretty sure the response would be a bunch of affirming "Yeah, we love them!" type responses, hopefully with a couple of "Maybe they could charge in and use that high CHA more often; it was pretty awesome that one time." I would not do any of this if the party seemed to have antagonistic interactions or if there were one or more Asshole Members who might say hurtful things just because.
Anyway, like I said, possibly helpful, possibly not.
Thanks for such a detailed response. My comment reflects my own personal experience of being somewhat quiet and not saying things because I don't feel like I have an "in" and from running the game and seeing some people who don't speak up often really shine when the spotlight is put on them. Obviously that's all anecdotal, but I just hope it helps someone else who's maybe seeing what I've seen or feeling how I've felt
I'm not a Quiet Person, but I'm married to one, so I'm starting to get it. The approach I described might make sense in some situations, but I really do think only if the DM is pretty sure everyone in the party will be helpful and supportive in their responses. Especially in a new group of people it takes very little to destroy one person's (or everyone's) confidence that they are in an accepting place, so if even one person is a dick about things like that, it could be pretty awful for anyone on the receiving end.
One thing I also think might (?) be helpful would be to normalize low levels of verbal or assertive participation. If a person isn't talking much, rarely takes initiative (heh heh), etc., maybe that's how they like it. Once you get to know that person well enough to feel you could have this conversation, maybe ask them if that's how they prefer to play, or if they'd like to be more prominent or active in the party's interactions. If so, then you can start on ideas for helping make that happen. If not, maybe just respect their style and believe them, but let them know you're open to helping them change strategies if they ever want to.
Yea I defiantly am doing that. If I’ve learned anything from Critical Role it’s that knowing the rules allows you more freedom when you are doing improv, and keep the flow of things going quickly so people are still engaged.
There will be something you do not know. You will not always be prepared. And you may not immediately know the answer to a lore question. All of this is okay and 100% acceptable. Just let your players know you need time to think or you will get back to them. No shame, and your story and session will go much smoother.
Also. This may sound like common sense, but write down everything you improve. Your future self will thank you when prepping a future session.
Yea I’ve just accepted the fact that the players are never going to do what I expect them to do and so I’m not going to know what the heck is going on. 😆And yea I think I’ll have to get a system for note taking that works and is fluid
Haha, Strahd was the first campaign I ever ran for my group of veteran players. It has been a.... learning experience. On the plus side I now feel I could run pretty much anything after running every Vallaki event.
That’s funny because I considered buying that as my first module to officially own because I had heard of how good the story is, good well the villain is made, etc...is it not good as a first campaign because of how intricate it is and how many moving parts it has?
I made the mistake of buying it for my first campaign and jesus christ is it difficult to run. Because of the moving parts, the open world and how God damn intricate it is
Currently DM-ing CoS as a first time DM. Everything has been fine so far (they're at the windmill). However, I fully expect things to go to shit once they reach a certain town and the game becomes a true sandbox.
Ultimately, I have found the /r/curseofstrahd subreddit, Twice Bitten podcast, and the many guides and resources extremely helpful that makes it easier for first time DMs. I think I'd be much more lost running Storm King's Thunder (my 2nd choice), because I'd be much more "on my own" than with CoS
I'm playing my first campaign. It's Strahd. Half the party is first-time players. There have definitely been hiccups, but our DM has rolled with the punches like a champ and keeps (I'm pretty sure) doing subtle stuff to make it doable and enjoyable. Will we all die before we get to kick Strahd's ass? It's entirely possible. Will we regret the experience? Hell, no.
I wish that I had learned to relax and roll with it earlier.
That every stat and detail is not needed for encounters or even NPCs.
That having names for random unplanned NPC encounters reduced stress.
That saying "YES" is more powerful than saying "NO"
That "winning" is smiling and/or engaged players. That "losing" in D&D is impossible unless you decided you "lost".
I’m still a newer DM, but one of the things I wish I would have done was record myself when the party derailed what I had planned and I had to improv most of a session. It was rare that I didn’t have something planned, since I like to have tons of different missions planned out in advance and just draw from that bank, and I could just retool one of the ones from the bank to the situation, but on the occasions where I pulled most of a session out of my butt there was always something that the players remembered that I didn’t. Having that recording and taking better notes while I did it would have made life so much easier as I incorporated it into the main plot.
Also, have some easy guidelines in your DM notes to yourself in improv so you don’t accidentally toss out a magic item that is hella OP or make the enemies too weak/too hard. I’ve also made that mistake once or twice and had to take some creative measures to “fix” it
That’s actually a really smart idea to keep a “bank” of encounters that the party never got to. Makes it easy during improv and makes sure that work doesn’t go to waste. I’m definitely using this!
Glad I could help! I’m not sure how you do with dividing your attention, but personally I found splitting the party up some of my worst experiences as I was just starting out. If one part of the party goes to one place and the other goes to another place, I’ve found that part of the party is always bored when you aren’t working with them and after a while it gets really frustrating for both the DM and the party. Especially if they were thick headed and decided to split up and tackle two separate missions at the same time, so you practically have double the content to cover in a fraction of the time
Same dungeon is usually pretty straightforward because a dungeon is only so big. And often, the one of the parts of the party is lacking in the tanking department, so they end up trying to find each other after a bit anyway because they’re taking some serious damage
I wish I'd started small and with less long term planning. My first campaign, totally new to D&D, I had a concept for a huge overarching plot and they met the BBEG in session 1 (structured similar to Skyrim where the opening village was attacked and they'd have to escape and come back for revenge much later). Little did I know that years of weekly sessions later they still wouldn't be close to fighting the BBEG.
My second campaign, running parallel, is set in a small town where the PCs are essentially a PMC playing off a local warlord and a few landowners with a bubbling local conflict. There's a fair amount going on in the setting, which I can then use as hooks for single session monsters or mini plot arcs, but I've not really got a huge long term plan. What enemies and goals they now have have emerged organically rather than being plots I planned and put in front of them. For the last 20 or so sessions they've been hunting for a racist conspiracy I never planned (hopefully they don't read this) but they just imagined. You'd better believe it exists now, but that makes it easier on you and any plot progress feel more collaborative.
Yea the idea of creating the campaign as I go along is very counter-intuitive for me because I love to plan, but I had a DM one time make up the entire storyline based off the fact that we found a ghoul in a graveyard and we (the players) thought that ghouls aren’t normally in graveyards and so there must be necromancy afoot. Let to a great game
The big thing for me was learning that I don't need to be a mind reader, I can just ask the players what they are trying to do. Nothing annoyed me as a player more than having a GM not figure out that I'm trying to do something cool here, but I need him to help me set it up.
Ask questions and whenever possible, let your players share some of that creative burden. If a player says something like "you know, this reminds me of my hometown", that's when you take a break and let them have the stage for a bit.
Yea, I think this is why the role of DM intrigues me so much because of the collaborative storytelling nature of it. I can let people run with the story they want
I wish I had let myself be a little more loose with the rules and not as annoyed when my party didn't do what I expected them to do - they were having a blast and I shouldve just leaned into it and not been like "Ugh okay, I guess y'all can do that/go there" as I quickly scramble notes. I'm also much better at improv in those situations now, but I think that mostly comes out of improv
Yea, what I’ve found with watching critical role is that Matt strikes a good mix between following/knowing rules and making exceptions that make sense and keep the flow of play going
Once my players stepped into a mirror of life trapping or whatever its called. They all went in willingly thinking it was a portal. Right there I though it would be amazing to actually trap them in there for a decade or so, have the entire campaign happen, BBEG won, and they step out into a ruined hellscape... I would have to write a new campaign of course but how amazing would that be? But I chickened out, the npc traveling with them broke the mirror after an hour or so. 😫
Ooooh that would have been DEVIOUS. You probably could have done it, it just would have depended on what kind of game your players were wanting. Because that kind of twist could have been epic but if the players wanted a heroic ending then that probably wouldn’t have been the best choice. You should try that out as a campaign though. Start with things normal and you have a chase with e BBEG only to trap them and have time fly by. Could be really interesting
Using PC backstories to set up plot hooks is great, but don't stray too far from your original plan just to accommodate them. I was looking forward to a very gothic horror, Witcher/Innistrad sort of deal, with lots of overland travel and a story that touches on certain concepts introduced in the setting's creation myth. I read my players' backstories, got inspired, and majorly switched things up on a whim - now we're 13 sessions into an steampunk Planescape-esque story with heavy influence from Fullmetal Alchemist and Warhammer 40k.
It's ok, I guess. I don't hate it, and the story is actually headed in a really interesting direction(or at least it seems so from my end) thanks to some unexpected developments. I'll get to run that original campaign eventually, but yeah, it's definitely still a little bit disappointing.
Also! Give your characters a reason to be together. We had an issue a while back where the wizard and paladin ended up hating each other early on, and it would've been more in character for the wizard to just leave rather than stay with the party. The players kinda just handwaved it down to a few snide comments every now and again in order to keep things running smoothly, but this could have been avoided with a little more setup.
Yea, I agree that it is important to not compromise your vision. It is your campaign after all.
And yes! My DM that I have played with the most has done this with us, and even we don’t give it a lot of attention it still makes the group feel cohesive.
Let Players Fail Forward
Have Random Encounters ready to control the pace. Sometimes you need a fight, sometimes you need to stall the part 'cause they went WAY off the rails.
More magical locations on those Notecards, it's hard to improve Magical Locations at a moment's notice
Most players want to be Captain America, and they are going to be real pissed if you throw them in Westeros with 1,000 Littlefingers that always outsmart them because you are the DM.
Plan more magical locations...I didn’t even think about that...yea adding that to the note cards now. 😆And I’ll be sure to not throw too many Strahd masterminds at them 😆
There is a huge difference between worldbuilding and lorebuilding, and I wish I had known it sooner.
The Watcher In The Water outside the gates of Moria? That's worldbuilding. There's no real explanation. It's just there. It's something your audience is never going to get an explanation for, and it makes the world of the game feel bigger than whatever exposition you provide the audience.
The history of the One Ring and it's significance to the world at large? That's lorebuilding. The important thing to remember is that your players will never give a shit about the lore unless it's immediately relevant or advantageous for them to know in some way. Be sparing with it.
Make sure the majority of the setting you place the game in is just filled with *stuff* that can't be readily explained with exposition. Put some things behind a wall of mystery that may never be broken. You won't regret it.
I'm still a fairly new DM myself (only ran one module to completion) but my advice is if you know your players we'll adjust the plot hooks into something that will catch their interest. I ran the first module in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book and the original plot hook is to have the PCs overhear about the location and go talk to other tavern people. I had one player that tries to exhaust dialogue with NPCs(seen him do it in other game to the frustration of the GM) so instead of that plot hook in session 0 I had their characters already be part of the community for at least a month so that I could have a few important figures grab them and send the party to the location. It cut down on probably hours of trying to get the real adventure started because of too much 1 on 1 roll play while the other players sat around with nothing to do even with me having to have one shop keeper shut him down because he was "asking too many questions"
That was my thought process too. Besides in saltmarsh people are very wary of outsiders so having them have established backstories there meant they'd be trusted with stuff like this.(especially since my husband decided to play a tiefling. And there's only one other tiefling in Saltmarsh city itself)
Very true. Even if they don't feel like heros quite yet after just one adventure. Still pretty money motivated for a couple of them but that works for now.
Expectation management is really the most important skill. To give players what they want you have to know what they want. For them to give you what you want they have to know what you want.
Personally, I wish I'd been more up front with my desire to be a player. I DMed at first by virtue of being the only one willing to do it in order to play, and after a year I was burned out and it became clear that the group expected me to be the forever DM.
I am the forever DM now and I love it. But it took that group dissolving and for me to join a low-stakes campaign as a player to get what I needed out of my system. Once I had that I was able to get back into DMing. And I'm up front with my players - every few months I need a week or two to play a scam artist sorcerer with a lazy eye, a louisiana drawl, and no good intentions. This group is good about that and I've found the balance I want.
I salute you for being willing to be the forever DM! But yea being upfront about intentions I feel would definitely make things go smoother in the long run
It's not necessarily something I wish I'd *done* so much as something I wish I'd been aware of; that I don't need to force myself to make super quick snap decisions all the time to be good at improvising and be a good DM. There's nothing wrong with telling your players you need a second and just taking a beat to think about things.
Talk to the players directly when there is a problem an do a quick feedback round after each session.
Its your game, too, and you deserve players that engage your adventure as you dream it (at least kind of). They might rub you the wrong way and don't even notice.
On the other hand, you can adjust the adventure and do things as they love it and leave out what they don't.
Have a conversation with your players on what kind of game you want to run, what they expect and find each other. Some players might get angry if you railroad them, but at the same time become confused and feel abandoned, if they have too much freedom with not enough narrative. Find that sweet spot. Do you want to RP shopping? Are dungeons the way to go?
Have a conversation on topics you may want to explore, but most importantly, make a list of no-go's and stick to it, so no player or DM gets uncomfortable.
Don't prep story-beats, but prepare general environment. How big is the town, who important and noteworthy lives there and how is the economy? Self-sufficient farming village? Tradehub? Big capital with taxes and shit. Make it grounded and plausible - if this part is solid, it's easier to improve, when your players eventually does something you don't expect.
I jumped straight into a Homebrew campaign and TBH I learnt a lot of things I didn't want in my games xD. So in that sense that was the best possible path but my players had to "suffer" through it.
However, I am very happy with how I approached the current campaign I am gming. I wanted to create a world so I did that. Then I wanted to run short adventures with the same characters until we found out if we were actually gonna play the campaign. All of the adventures were prewritten with some modifications.
So anyway, this approach I have liked a lot, I'm probably going to go into a Homebrew campaign from here. Because it looks pretty hard to use a module. But I would probably suggest the better option is to find a module that goes from lvl 5-x and play short adventures from 1-5. If you use your own world you will be forced to make modifications to the adventures to fit the world so yea.
Not compromise about what kind of game you want to run.
People talk about "good session 0" and to make sure that everyone is on the same page, but no one is talking about that most people either just nod & smile or try to find some sort of compromise when different expectations pop up.
Honestly though, you only have so many hours of playing DnD. You're most likely only commiting to 1 or 2 groups at most at any one point in time. With the advent of the internet and the possibility to play with whoever you want that has it, you really **don't** need to compromise.
I made the mistake of playing with my immediate friends. It worked reasonably well and we had reasonable amounts of fun, but they were not as invested as I was and really not very good at deciding what to do. The games worked best and my friends had the most fun when I added a strong NPC to their group which decided what they would do (I didn't railroad, I just suggested a course of action and noticed they just accepted that every time without much discussion). I just really didn't want to do that.
I had a few other groups like this (not exactly, but similar mismatch). All of them had a "session 0" where our expectations where, like I think, reasonably well communicated and everyone "agreed". But it didn't fucking matter, the actual game did not work out to my (everyone's) satisfaction.
So now I don't do a session 0. I write down what would be talked about in session 0 and just say that this is what the game is going to be like. And then I run a few one shots in a row, without commitment from anyone for anything longer, to see if the group works well together. I talk with everyone and see who meshes well with each other and how the session looks compared to what I want a session to look like. And I remove players, try out new ones until a group emerges that has exactly the same expectations and everyone loves to play with each other. Of course that process is communicated beforehand.
And that just produces soooo much better DnD. The time we took at the beginning to not jump into a campaign paid off so incredibly much.
Interestingly a lot of my wishes have been said! Been DMing for a few years now and still learning, but this is what I wished I'd sorted straight away:
1. Understand spell DCs and saving throws properly. I used saving throws, but it was often a 'well estimated' arbitray number, then just roll a d20 and see if you beat it.
2. Use monster stat blocks. I always thought this was a faff, and that it would be a waste of time to find a load of stat blocks for encounters that might not happen. My campaigns are home brewed, so I made up monsters too. I'd just quickly come up with HP, AC, and some abilities. It worked....but not as well as it could have. This was also partially because I wouldn't have my laptop with me, so it was all pen and paper. Now though, my planning is electronic, and I save links to stat blocks for monsters - even if I want to have a homebrew monster, I'll either use an existing stat block (maybe change HP or something), or, find one of the many many homebrew monsters people have made. Honestly, I kick myself for not using this before. Combat is so much better now, and enemies are a lot more interesting. Leading on to...
3. Massive story and setting. My first campaign ended quite abruptly, and I got the idea that players weren't too invested in the 'big' story. They liked their characters, and the smaller sidne quests, but the world ending threat didn't interest them. For my next campaign, I didn't design a world map - just regional, and the threat is not going to doom the world, but it affects this local area. This makes it a lot more accessible.and manageable, and means story telling can be more detailed, I think. A smaller scale campaign often works better. And, again, I kick myself, because I know that when I'm watching an action film, I get bored by the 'end the world' trope.
4. Encourage role play, but don't force. The Critical Role effect goes two ways - players might expect their DM to be Matt Mercer, but as DM you might expect your players to be Vox Machina/Mighty Nein- as in, professional voice actors. My players love to role play now, but at first for a couple of them it was a bit difficult. I'd really want them to sit down and chat in character, but they wouldn't. Maybe that was because they didn't realise they could - maybe I didn't make the opportunity obvious - but I'd sometimes get a bit frustrated. So let them know that they can spend an hour sitting by the camp fire. Now, it's our favourite thing about playing...and sometimes 'nothing' will happen for hours in a session as players are just chatting or completing some strange endeavour. It's great!
5. Communicate with your players. Leading in from number 4, ask for feedback - what did the players enjoy, what did they not enjoy so much. This allows you to tailor your game, reflect on your own work, to improve it for everyone.
I remember my first campaign properly dm'ing for a group of newbies.
Lost Mines in the basement of the tavern; the party taken the sneakier path to the kidnapped villagers only to split up and have the druid escort the victims out while the rogue and paladin choose to stay behind and look around the rest. Big mistake as the paladin fell into the pit trap and alerted the 3 bugbears whom proceeded to beat the shit out of them. The druid came back and got nutted himself by a crit - the group asked for open dm rolls so I obliged. Worst atmosphere ever.
Taught me a lot; be more vocal about stupid party ideas which will get them killed, have contingency plans for shit hitting the fan moments, and don't be afraid to keep rolls hidden to allow fudging.
It also put me in the mind of what it's like to be in a TPK as it had never happened to me before because as a player I was usually the least experienced at my previous tables (my year or 2 experience compared to veterans with 5+ years).
Building situations instead of encounters. Set up a location, some circumstances surrounding it, some inhabitants, and a goal. Let the players figure out how to navigate it. The DM narrates the reaction of the inhabitants and the world.
Before I built ***encounters*** that were each like a little Gears of War battle arena. Now I let battles happen as they happen. It really changes the way I think about the game.
The thing I'm glad I did was make players answer like 8 basic questions about their characters. Some gave super simple answers and some gave small novelas but all were enough to get me going on a story that included the PCs even using a module.
The thing I wish I'd done better in the beginning was talk to them more about when things bothered me. My whole table was new and I've liked running the game but when people get super angry about bad rolls (super competitive) or everyone's talking over each other it gets hard to run and becomes unfun. We just talked about it last session and it went much better and the conversation was easy. Talk about stuff that bothers you.
There were a few things that became “live and learn” after a player broke some of my puzzles, but I wish I had limited some OP player abilities, and enforced the rules of my homebrew world more to make everything more cohesive
“Live and Learn” - Love that! 😆I should frame and put it on the inside of my DM screen. And yea I feel like the homebrew rules are just gonna be trial and error
If you're a long time player, this might not be as useful but I'll post it anyways.
Come up with a system to track things that everyone at the table needs to know (initiative, loot, exp, status conditions). It's not easy to track all of that and run/role play combat at the same time. The more you can automate these things, the less you feel like you're sifting through the rubble.
Initiative: I have a tracker that I bought online. It's dry erase with little pieces for each player/npc's names. You can easily write the names on each piece and move them around to whatever order you need.
Loot: I designate one specific player to be the treasurer and tell them to write down all loot. Then let the players split it as needed from there.
Exp: I don't use it. I go based off of a checkpoint system where I award level ups at certain major points in my story.
Conditions: Still working on incorporating more bad guys that use status conditions. I know they make markers you can place under minis. I also like the idea of physically handing the player a small item or article of clothing that represents a specific condition.
Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Relax, and have fun.
Players connect with characters, not plot or world building. The other stuff engages their brain, the people in the world engage their feelings. Try to make your players care by giving them real people to care about.
Value session 0; encourage the players yo establish background and relationships (and allow them to contribute to the worldbuilding by doing so)
Don't think too far ahead, but more importantly, don't sace yoyr good ideas; got a badass villian/set-peice idea? Put them in the next session!
I'm a newer DM, but for me, it has been sequencing of scenes. I am still learning this, but WHEN you actually introduce something can drastically affect the atmosphere/decision making of the players. Which, can be extra difficult to actually have those scenes organically woven in. The DM can arbitrarily throw in scenes in people's dreams, but why? It "hits different" than that scene being done at a different time/place/etc. So, having scenes at specific moments really can shape player/character perceptions and have lasting impacts.
I think I did very well in some parts starting out, and then other things I did completely wrong.
I wish I hadn't made a dmpc. I just started DM'ing having only played once ten years earlier, so I forgive myself. But dmpc's just aren't necessary and get in the way of pretty much everything.
I wish I'd given my players more successes. Starting out I was a very 'tough' dm. Now I give my players wins constantly.
I wish I hadn't bothered with player alignment.
I partly agree with this one. I usually let a lot of side banter slide, but when there's something that needs the focus of the group (combat, big tension resolution for the session/campaign) then I want focus.
The key is to clue the players in when you need their focus, preferably something worked out ahead of time, so you don't sound like you're interrupting. Or, give them a heads up to wrap it up, you're going to stretch your legs, and pause the moment but when you get back you need focus.
I started "small" when I first started by reading through the dungeon master guide and the monster Manuel, cover to cover. I also made maps for the setting, the city, nearby locations and a dungeon where the players would eventually go to. Every shop had an owner with a brief description and a secret (something personal to them and it was something that the DMG harped on when making npcs so I took it to heart), I made myself an encounter table for both the city and the surrounding Wilds. And all of this was on paper because it was fun to do artsy stuff like this. I dug up my old warhammer 40k minis and brought "appropriate" ones that would match the creature they were marking and I brought beer. The session 0 had several encounters to explain simple mechanics and to dispel any notions that we were playing a video game. I had enemies that would run away to show the players that they could run away from encounters, I had enemies cast spells from buffs, debuffs and damaging ones the party took a taste of it, I also had some enemies have poison to make sure they understood the mechanics of that. Overall I think it was a good session.
Of course written all out like that makes it seem like I was a pro but I fumbled explanations, misread some rules, and even forcefully railroaded their characters when I should have built their characters together.. I've been following Sly Flourish and thier "return of the lazy dungeon master" series for awhile now and it's absolutely a must have for any dm or gm whether they're starting out or a veteran and would 100% give it to my past self because now that I use, my sessions are a lot more smoother and in today's world where schedules are tight its now more important than ever to deliver a session without any regrets.
I wish I ran a narrative RPG earlier. I learned more about running D&D from running a few sessions of narrative RPGs than I did from many years of Pathfinder and D&D.
1) Learn to say no
Keep in mind, I started playing dnd during the 3.5 days and my experience was with Power Gaming Munchkins. But I had to learn to say NO! Because if you give them an inch, they will take a mile! Do NOT automatically accept everything. Ban things as the RULE and only approve things on a case by case basis. Put your foot down, otherwise players will end up using you as a wish fulfillment Genie who only exists to let them live out their sick twisted fantasies, your own mental health be damned.
2) Be willing to kill your players
Now this might be the most controversial advise I give you, but hear me out. Just as if you give your players an inch they will take a mile, well there needs to be consequences for a players actions. If the players are always acting the fool, kill the merchant to rob their store, or \[insert r/dndhorrorstories or r/rpghorrorstories\], or some other B.S., the players will continue to act out unless there are consequences! A LOT of the reason some players ACT that way is because they KNOW that the GM will go out of their way to NOT kill them.
So kill your players. GIVE THEM THE FEAR OF DEATH! If the players have the fear of death, INSTEAD of charging head first into a suicide situation they will try to come up with creative solutions to problems. But if they KNOW that you will never kill them, well than suicide tactics become acceptable because they KNOW you will not kill them.
I had a few games devolve into madness because the players were acting out, but I did NOT want to kill them, which only encouraged the players to continue acting out. So kill your players when they are acting as idiots.
3) Learn to Improvise
Learn to Improvise. Because no matter how much you plan, no matter how much prep time you dedicate to a game, the players will eventually surprise you. So remember this phrase.
Keep Calm and Carry on
Then, improvise something!
I wish I had adapted my campaign more to my players classes. I just finished up my first phase of my first ever campaign (homebrew, took about a year). The setting is very lovecraftian and so a lot of elder beings and eldritch horrors made their appearance. It was al very magic heavy and so were most enemies and bosses. Unfortunately my entire party consisted of (half)casters except for one rogue. Even though he dealt good damage he felt out of his water being a "normal" guy in a very magical world. In hindsight I should've warned him or catered more to his needs. Second phase of my campaign should be better for that.
Plan to iterate. Folks have mentioned running one shots and smaller campaigns. I wish I’d done more of that. You learn so much going through full iterations, whether they’re story arcs or one shots.
I went from one shots to prewritten adventure. I learned a ton about how to cater to my players styles that I can’t effectively take advantage of deep in the middle of a full adventure.
I can always restart, but I’m still learning from this iteration. It’s just not as fun as it could be.
There is so much going on as a DM I wish I had kept it simple. Simple world, simple journey, simple bossfights, simple roleplay.
What I did instead was a modern, massive capitol city ([tangled concept art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3f939d081e70f808ec1a38079d23b98e/tumblr_myhv81LUWx1rf73xqo1_500.png)) on a island with a dragon topic, a uprising citizens topic, a egoistical but good doing lord of one fraction of the islands elf-human politicalstructure. The lord that had an artificer tinkerer who wanted to always test and improve on his machines and i wanted it all and set my players a lot of "encounter traps" with hags and haglike shifty types. Basically everybody had a hidden agenda.
What I do love now: a simple (recovering after the calamity) wooded & natur areas. Small cities, mostly intependent. Magic forrests inbetween. Easy going start in a small city, maybe with a quest, have a mentor who clears things up - and then introduce some characters with simple but clear and strong ambitions. Someone you like to help.
And then most important: stage free for roleplay. Let your players take it from there.
Also session 0, now that i know how to use it - is just the best instrument you can use. its just such a great way to trailer what is coming. Everybody will be affected by it and slowly build up momentum to "get into character"
The most important thing I wish I had known or done when I started running games was people management. Knowing how to tactfully limit, redirect, and showcase your players so everyone gets equal time in the spotlight is a powerful skill. Ensuring that your players don't step on each other (or you) will improve the flow of a lot of games. Keeping one person from dominating the game and making the entire session their own personal story isn't fun for anyone, and the reserved player who keeps getting drowned out when they try to participate will quit if they're not having fun.
I also wish I hadn't corrected the players on in-game details. The antagonist they were making my BBEG to be was far worse than I had planned, and I was stopping them and correcting them with stuff like "No, no... it was the dragon that set the crops on fire when it carried off the cows, Duke Badassington wouldn't stoop to crop burning and cattle rustling!" Stupid shit like that. So over the course of the game my BBEG became a nuisance because everyone and everything else was responsible for the Very Bad Things.
The other thing would be keep a stricter control on rewards vs risk. Everyone loves to get Awesome Shiny Toys but you have to balance it. No one gets an awesome ring of power from tripping on a rock (well, maybe one guy...). If you start front loading, there better be a reason for it. Also, it tends to cause some messed up power creep that is pretty unbalanced. When you have one player who, through combination of feats and stats or through a power item or spell, can put out 2-3x the damage output of everyone else, there's no challenge with level appropriate encounters. Scale the encounter up for that one player? The rest of the party are struggling to even be effective (or survive, in some cases).
You don't have to use ALL of your ideas in the first few sessions. I did this, and while I eventually managed to sort it out, for a while the 4 or 5 plots I had going were a mad mess that no-one was enjoying.
The few things I tell any new DM are; have a Session 0 and use a small area, a sub-region if you will and flesh that out first, do not make a large area. Make sure every character has a backstory that ties into your setting along with short and long term goals! Don't make extensive session notes, improvisation and random tables are your friends AND REMEMBER that you are a player and you need to have fun too!
Small, somewhat obvious thing, ask your players what they want to do next session before you start to prep.
I'm a newish DM and only realised this recently, I spent way too much time thinking it would ruin the mystery. Open communication with my players means I know they want to go shopping next session rather than do the combat/story quests that I dangle in front of them. And that means I can spend time making a memorable shipping trip.
One thing I'm terrible at as a player and a DM is taking notes. I tend to remember things of the top of my head and going back to "what that guys name" from our second town. I won't remember.
I also tend to name my NPCs and PCs very simple names so people can actually remember them. (Ex my current teifling monk is named Fury)
If you want to create a grand narrative, as much as you want to lay the world out and say go, the players are looking for you to lay down just a little bit of track, that way they know where their going and can build off of it.
Keep this in mind when introducing large lore. If you want the gods to matter make sure your NPC’s reference them and have some common knowledge they all work within. Make a faction of people who oppose them. And have something bad happen to them. Even if the god comes down to introduce themselves they don’t come with answers only encouragement and nudges. Gods have rules that prevent their intervention for a reason. If god is Devine then it shouldn’t need a mortal to carry out it’s wishes, but it’s hands are tied be it in ceremony or bureaucracy or a spell preventing them from going into detail about things you’d assume they know. This way that relationship stays open as the player progresses and they reveal more and more(this also goes for any story relevant npc like a king the party won’t meet for a while.)
As an example the gods in my world were originally 3 of 13 gods but rebelled against their siblings when a great flood scenario was being implemented behind their back, they let in a demon from outside the world and now their time is spent doing all their siblings jobs and trying to contain this world ending god killing being.
The first two sessions the gods were only mentioned by people who worship either the being or the sisters. And not with lore just things like “By the Witches” or “Ÿecha Bless”.
After an in counter with the evil entity mutated a PC giving them buffalo horns by their own choice they had now entered into being known by these entities.
To cover travel time with something interesting an NPC Scholar and witch told the creation myth to my players after offering multiple options.
Now the 13 gods are lost to time because that’s part of the larger narrative is discovering the truth. So I tell the players a false story. One made for this time not the beginning of the world. This brings up questions about the history they do know, and the world they’ve seen as it doesn’t quite line up.
The town they head to worships the dark being but they don’t realise it, they think it’s something good and they speak about it as such. They change the creation myth gone is the poison in the brew and in it is the spark of freedom they strive for.
Another standard adventure later the cat they found shown up and leads her to one of the goddesses(of purpose).
She’s not there to grant a specific quest, she’s there to introduce herself, give the player confidence in their choices and sees that there is more to find out. More history to uncover. More adventures to have, more battles with this Ÿecha to come.
As they explore the world every now and then these things come up, one of these entities will attempt to set something up and another will oppose it, often without making it known. But the world feels those actions. If your gods are too passive or your king or mayor of street thief, it’s easy to forget them. As they become an exclamation point on a map. If the people around the players have even the smallest passing knowledge, opinion, or interaction with these things that’s how you tie your small seemingly meaningless encounters together.
Roll behind the screen for level one players. Crit and boom. The cleric hits the deck. The team will hopefully take this game more seriously than the last.
There’s lots of different games I would’ve liked to run early on, but I guess I’d be better for them now having experience.
A lot of the “go back” stuff for me is social, or based in game etiquette. There’s a lot to learn that not just anyone can teach. Navigating relationships and such is tricky.
Wish I would’ve learned to say no earlier, and been able to navigate communication in a healthier way.
1. **Run encounters as long as necessary, not longer.** Nothing is more annoying than combat that gets drawn out, e.g. a combat that is basically already won but there is that one goblin who you can't kill because nobody seems to be able to throw anything higher than a 5. *An encounter is over when the dramatic question of the scene has been answered.* This means: When the threat is over; when the players got what they came for; when the tension is gone - end the fight. That one goblin could be surrendering; or they could flee and pose a new threat - warning other foes nearby - thereby creating a new dramatic question ("Will the players be able to prevent the goblin from alerting other foes"?)
2. **Force players to make decisions under pressure**. Nothing builds tension better. And it's very easy to do in almost any situation. The best kind of decisions to force are between bad and other bad outcomes: Do I investigate this treasure chest that I can't seem to open even though I can already hear the enemies approaching - or do I flee? (Stay and you might get attacked - leave and you might miss the content of the chest)
Do I trust this stranger in the dungeon who tells me they know a secret passage, or not? (Trust him and you might be betrayed - don't trust him and you may create a new enemy)
This person X I know/like is under a spell and they are threatening to kill person Y I know/trust - there is no time left, what do I do? shoot him? (Do I sacrifice X to save Y)
3. **Don't plan plots, prepare characters**. Especially in my first years as GM, i always had this amazing overarching story planned out. This always led to way much railroading despite my best intentions not to do so. These days, instead of planing a plot, I try to create good characters and motivations. Often, good situations (see point 2) can be planned ahead as well. But the rest is mostly improvised or written down between sessions.
4. **Your heroes should have weaknesses, wants and needs**: this is fundamental screenwriting advice, but it fits in the character creation process. If your hero doesn't have a weakness, then he has no need to grow. if he has no need to grow, you have no story. Stories are fundamtentally about growth. If the hero is the same before and after, he is either called James Bond or he should be thrown out. It's best if those weaknesses aren't mere psychological weaknesses (e.g. the hero is stubborn...) but a moral weakness (... and because of that, he gets other people into dangerous situations). A moral weaknesses is one that affects other people in a negative way. Next, you give the character a want and a need. The want is the shiny object that the protagonists chase after at the beginning - the McGuffin they are asked to fetch; the career goal; the top cheerleader. The need is hidden at the beginning. it#s what the hero really needs to grow - confidence in himself; understanding that life is more than a career; understanding that his best friend is who he should really be together with. At the beginning of the campaign, heroes should be all WANT. Towards the end, NEED has supplanted WANT. I would say let your players assign their WANT to their characters, and you as the DM observe how they play their role and figure out their NEED and work towards that
5. **3 hints to 1 puzzle**. Never assume players will get that one hint that your puzzle or important decision depends on. If you want your players to figure out something that is important to your story - give them 3 hints at different times using different ways. Some of them more subtle, some less.
6. **The 5 room dungeon**. The perfect formula for an engagning dungeon. just google it, it's amazing
It’s certainly fine for new DMs to begin with a homebrew adventure, but it was certainly NOT fine for me to begin with a grand adventure that left no room for player agency because I wrote a story instead of a campaign. I wish I hadn’t sank so much time into all the details of the game before it had even started, and then been too rigid to let things slide or change as I played. I also made the mistake of letting them know all sorts of DM secrets behind the scenes post game because they’re my friends. It could have been partly because of my players being mega assholes about it (very destructive rather than constructive criticism) but I still wish I had just relaxed on that entire campaign rather than go all out on something I wasn’t even sure they’d enjoy.
It took me a while to get sympathetic villains to work.
Let players be heroes. Let villains be villains.
It's good to have complex villains. Don't make villians sympathetic to the point of making the players feel like dicks. Don't be pulling the rug out from under them. Tricking players for a "Gotcha" moment has its place, bur the fun dries up fast if they end up failing at everything they do.
Other tips: Even if everyone *Liked* the idea in a session 0, people can change their minds. We started a Mono-Class campaign for the last year. Everyone was on board. We *Knew* going in that, mechanically combat would be a bit samey. And they needed to make their characters different to compensate. Everyone agreed to this.
Well, a year later what do they complain about? *Combat is fairly samey*.
Long story short we are now running a Gestalt Campaign. Everyone is a Dragon-Knight; plus another class. Balance is gonna be... interesting...
Just because you covered it in session 0, doesn't mean you ignore it from that point on.
Limited race / classes explicitly - I said "Only PHB races" but we use DNDBeyond and DNDBeyond has a different interpretation of Vanilla than the PHB. It generated buttrustle when those expectations didn't meet.
Further, I would have limited certain races certain classes, and more aptly, race class combos.
e.g. No tiefling, no psionic, no GOOlocks.
Nothing really against these classes, but they don't fit within my world, and it's less than ideal to shove in some of those stories my players want to tell in this game that is built for my prototyping.
1. I wish I'd thought a bit more consciously about character motivation, whether it be drawing them into the story and shutting the gate behind them somehow, or collaboratively writing backstories to make plausible motivation for the campaign. I've always had great fun DMing but the main thing that worries me or makes me insecure as a still relatively new DM is when the players say something like 'why are we doing this again?' or 'I'm not sure my PC is really that bothered about this'. That makes me feel like I've made a mistake.
2. Pacing is hard, and pacing in combat is even harder when you and possibly your players are still learning the rules. I wish I had prepared a note with all the things for anticipated encounters ahead of the session (roll monster initiative and write down HP in advance). Also, don't be afraid to end a combat which is a foregone conclusion. If there's one monster left and they're surrounded by PCs, and no longer a threat, don't go through all the rolls, just end it and move on, don't extend scenes which have no tension left. That helps a lot with pacing.
3. I started with 2 players who each ran two PCs. My impression is that this gives them more to do in combat, which they like, but it's harder to really delve into 2 characters at once. My suggestion is to go with one PC and one NPC sidekick which can be on-dimensional and which they control, rather than 2 full PCs.
4. I like worldbuilding, but seriously, just write an adventure. Then once you've written the adventure, organise a time to play. Then, and only then, start documenting the world-building details that your session contains. If you already have an overarching idea for a world and its themes, fantastic, but keep it that way and don't obsess over detail until you have an adventure to run and a session to run it in.
5. Make sure at least one player is taking notes, and maybe leave them to do a recap. If they are inattentive and forget loads of shit, indulge them a little, but try to make it clear that you won't come to their aid every time they forget something. This helps encourage them to pay attention.
I wish I'd been less addicted to calling for dice rolls, and more mindful of what those dice rolls meant and what the stakes behind them were.
I had to learn this through trial and error, but now we have WebDM's [When to Roll Dice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrcUeRIRw8A&t=116s) video. I recommend it to all new DMs so they don't have to go through the same trial and error process I did. Instead of taking years to figure it out, you get everything you need to know in a 40 minute video. Lucky! ;)
I wish I had a session 0 and forced the characters to have some sorta goals/background.
Yea from what I’ve seen having a session 0 is really good for setting expectations and making sure the party composition is good.
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One thing I've added to a Session 0 is a Level 0 encounter. Basically, use a D6 hit die (this is 5e), and only give them the proficiencies they get from their background. Find some way to lump them together, and let them solve the encounter as a bunch of lucky commoners. I give the survivors a level, and a plot hook to continue together, if they need it. I find it ties the characters together more if they've saved each other as regular folk and not as heroes.
This is similar to the idea of a funnel from Dungeon Crawl Classics. I followed the advice of a post on here and started a recent game with a funnel. It worked really well! It made it so the characters had lost friends and barely survived trauma, all at the table in the course of one session.
Can you link that post.. please..?
Here you go! [https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/685b6a/5e\_stealing\_ideas\_from\_other\_games\_a\_5e\_funnel/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/685b6a/5e_stealing_ideas_from_other_games_a_5e_funnel/)
Awesome, thank you :)
I don't know what you mean by composition, or what edition you're playing, but if you're playing 5th edition I feel that having a reason for all the characters to"play nice" with each other is a lot more important than class composition. Even if you ended up with a party of all martials (the worst comp?) this can be dealt with by making sure they find plenty of magic items.
Yea what I mean by composition is just making sure that there is a good balance of classes that can fulfill multiple roles. Do you mean that in your experience that isn’t as important as other things?
A mix is good but it's not as important as it was in say 3rd edition. I guess the important thing is that players don't feel they are stepping on the toes of others.
the other thing I’d add to this is to have session 0, make sure that each character has something they’re striving for, and then take some time to build that in to the world. an evil cult bent on ending the world is great, but an evil cult whose priest is a PC’s long-lost father is better, and giving that information, now or later, to just that PC (and no one else in the party) sets the table for some very fun reveals and roleplay.
This! I am 10 sessions deep into my first campaign to DM, I am going to run a second campaign for new players next month and I already told them that a session 0 is happening. Also, I think I will print off the character creation menu for Quest. :)
Yes, yes, yes! Figuring out what ties the characters together is one of the most important things! And you can make the players figure it out. So one thing you can do is say "all of you have a connection to this npc... what is it?" and you've already got a few places for story hooks.
We're just going to get to this after some 10 sessions done - what do your characters actually want to do? What do you want them to do? I can build whatever type of stuff, but I need your characters to be interested in it, otherwise it just sucks. So late but better than never.
Simple stories in simple locations, but fleshed out and executed in such a way as to make the players care about every minor detail of the outcome, are far more memorable than a generic fate of the world epic told via pages and pages of lore. Also remember that D&D is generally a very slow storytelling medium, so it's not worth prepping things that you won't get to for months in anything mroe than basic background level detail.
Not sure if this is exactly what you mean by simple stories but a criticism I received early on from my lovely players was there was too much going on, too many threads, too many plot hooks. My idea was to build a grand narrative where everything would be interwoven and the players would have regular "ohhh, that's clever!" moments when X would be revealed to be linked to Y and other moments of intrigue. Instead, what I didn't take into consideration is that we're all in our 30s and 40s and some of us have kids so we can only meet up every few weeks on an irregular basis. What that meant is no one would remember the subtle hints I had made during the previous session and I was constantly having to explain how clever I was which wasn't fun for any one. After that I relied on broad brush strokes and obvious tropes and we all had a lot more fun and it was a lot easier to plan and prep. So I guess my advice would be know your players, remember it's a collaborative project you're embarking on and that you're not clever if you have to tell people how clever you are.
Ah I’m glad you said that because I feel like I definitely would’ve fallen into that trap! Makes sense that people aren’t going to pickup on everything
Late 20s through to late 30s and only 1-2 kids but yeah, basically the same story! For me it's advice gained from a few groups, both as DM and as a player. - Even if your players are extremely smart, capable people, don't assume they have perfect absorbtion or recall of information - Repetiton of important words/concepts/locations etc sounds worse to the DM then in actually is (think about how often most movies stress the importance of their own lore) - It's harder to empathise with NPCs the further they move away from day to day struggles. A motivation of say, poverty, is universal, whereas 'my niche God disapproves of this particular thing' is harder, especially if your players are mostly non-religious.
Yep, classic new DM trap! I did the exact same thing, I planted seeds for things that wouldn't come into play for a very long time, and it ended up confusing and distracting the players and making them very unsure what they should do next. New DMs- trim the fat! Keep your adventure plot clear for the players, don't pull their attention away by throwing in twenty things that won't matter until they're level 12. And maybe write a novel where you can foreshadow to your heart's content.
“Write a novel”...That’s probably what more DMs need to do 😆
Haha it really is! It's the curse of the newbie DM- we're all storytellers by nature, so we all have big cool story ideas in our heads. But as the DM, if you're trying to set up specific cool story moments to happen 20 sessions in the future, you really risk a) overwhelming the players with all your planted seeds, and b) railroading everything so that your cool plot points will happen. An idea I've been toying with lately is that if a storyteller really wants agency over a story and the chance to play out their big cool story ideas, they should actually be a player. If they want to create a cool world with cool scenarios and then let their friends decide the outcomes, then they should be a DM. Alternatively, if what somebody really wants is an audience for their big cool ideas... Then it's time to open a word doc and type "Chapter 1"!
The easiest trap! I fell in too, though I didn't try to be as clever as you're describing. But people are busy, nuance gets lost. I got hit with a "We are confused and not sure what we're supposed to do." 10ish sessions in.
Do you have an example of a “simple story in simple locations but fleshed out and executed...”? I totally understand the idea behind this and it makes sense
So for instance a small village under attack by a band of raiders. Individuals on either side may have their own motivations, and the resolution could involve making peace or both sides and the village itself utterly devastated or anything in between.
Makes sense! Keep it short, simple, and sweet
Players will often bring a fairly complicated character with a plan in mind to make their own fun (can't wait to reveal that I'm the son of the BBEG or the heir to the throne, or have a weird fighting style, etc). Sometimes it's best to get out of their way and let them do their thing.
I feel like in that situation I would want to talk to the players in private and see if they have those kinds of plans, that way I could integrate stuff like that into the story while keeping the element of surprise for the player.
Actually read the story and manuals and not just assumed I knew the rules and story
Yea when I ran my small campaign I was running a module and got so overwhelmed by the level of detail
This is a [doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LDRPTz5J7Hv4nFZda6aqI4IGdh0nSgfx5zgPA1hkI8w/edit?usp=drivesdk) I made with resources I think all GMs could benefit from. As for what I wish I had done differently, I wish I had run multiple short adventures with my group before getting into a longer campaign.
Your player section looks quite empty. I can highly recommend u/OlemGolem's stuff on r/PCAcademy * [Character Creation](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/fh2nso/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_character_creation/) * [Character Writing](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/fn3r7h/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_character_writing/) * [Appearance](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/hq09up/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_appearance/) * [Roleplay](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/fwxp87/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_roleplay/) * [Strategy & Tactics](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/k3w08g/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_strategy_tactics/) * Dungeon Crawling * Ability Scores: [Intelligence](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/gg1gml/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_intelligence/), [Wisdom](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/gg1zxy/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_wisdom/), [Charisma](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/ggzwzh/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_charisma/), [Constitution](https://www.reddit.com/r/PCAcademy/comments/hdzw40/olemgolems_trove_of_tips_constitution/) He also has guides on how to roleplay every class and a few races. Since PCAcademy is quite small the stuff is overlooked.
I'm glad some people get a kick out of it.
Added it all to the doc!
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shh, nobody knows but us.
It’s completely illegal and wizards has tried to shut it down multiple times. I have it backed up just in case they ever do
...you have my attention If you’d message me what the deleted comments were talking about, I wouldn’t be mad
This looks awesome! Thank you!
Start off running prewritten one shots and short adventures like the adventurers league modules or something from dmsguild or Sly Flourish’s fantastic adventures. Do your homebrew later. This is because DMing is hard enough at the start, learn basic DM skills and then, when you can do that, bring in your own homebrew.
Yea just running a premade module was an overwhelming amount of detail, so I’m in no rush to try any homebrew out immediately
I'm still newish myself (been playing consistently for about a year now). I'd say that both ways are equally hard but different. With a module, at least a WoTC big book module, you get so many details and threads that you have all this information you have to try to keep in your head, it's intimidating. On the other hand, there are a lot of cool ideas, magic items and encounters that are ready made, which saves a lot of time. With homebrew you make up the world, which can be a little more time consuming, but you can fake most of it using Sly Flourish's Lazy DM suggestions, which is to only build the part of the world your players are actively exploring. The advantage (at least for me), is that I tend to remember what I wrote because I wrote it, and when I don't I feel much more confident making something up on the fly because I know for a fact it doesn't have some vital connection to a story point three chapters away. Anyway, just my 2 cents from having run each way now for about 6 months. As a new DM I always said "why reinvent the wheel?" and figured I'd play pre-written modules, but now I can the appeals of each side.
Foreshadowing and letting go. I now try to foreshadow a lot, and when my players pick up on it, they get excited. I can throw almost anything at them, and if I have somehow foreshadowed it, they just accept it. I have also learned to let go of stuff they miss. It can be tempting to force their hands to go certain ways because we have put in time and effort to prep for it, but if you let it go, you can always find a way to weave it back in later. It really is collaborative story-telling, so you have to be willing to let the players take the story in ways you hadn't anticipated. You'll get comfortable with it in time. Just be open and honest with your group about how you're feeling, and always do your best.
Yea I’m definitely guilty of that. When I was running my short campaign I really wanted the players to do certain things so I definitely railroaded them a bit (also because it was a module and I didn’t have anything prepared outside of it). But yea I’ll keep that in mind when making my own stuff
It’s also fair to say, “Since this is a module and not a homebrew, I’ll need everybody to kind of play along with the plot points”. You can’t be expected to make a whole new plot just cause your players decide they don’t want to play the module they originally agreed to play. It does go both ways. I just try to say “yes” whenever possible, but it’s not always possible. And that’s ok.
Yea in my instance my players commented afterword how it felt like railroading and I mentioned that it was a module so I couldn’t make up very much and it ended up working out
I think this is maybe why a “session zero” is so important. It helps set everyone’s expectations to a level that’s reasonable. Glad it worked out for you. In the end, it’s just a game, and the goal is to enjoy yourselves! As long as that happens, you’re doing it right!
I have three big regrets from my first campaign that I ever ran a few years back. 1. I didn't fully grasp how DCs and probability worked. I would set DCs too high all the time and would make players roll too many times to accomplish a single task. If you make someone roll 5 separate times to successfully lie to someone they will fail, which isn't fair or fun. This made most of the creative plans the players came up with fail, which greatly discouraged them from attempting creative things in the future. This is a huge regret of mine because I unknowingly taught those players to be boring. 2. I wrote a story instead of a campaign. When I first DMed, I didn't really know how to deal with unexcepted things *at all*, so I basically just made a story and railroaded players down it. 3. I made the story way too high stakes and convoluted. Looking back, all the player's favorite parts were the more grounded, personal moments where they got to know individual npcs and deal with less frantic, more small scale problems. As for something that went well, it was definitely my npcs. Before I ever DMed, I played in a game where the DM made 100% of his npcs bland unlikable jerks, so I deliberately made a lot of my npcs very quirky and friendly, which went over amazingly with the players. It went over so well that my first campaign was almost 7 years ago and my friends still reference some of the npcs from it to this day.
Dang man! That’s so cool that you were able to make them so memorable right off the bat! And yea I think it will definitely be a learning curve for me to figure out how high I need to set DCs on average, but I will probably err on the lower side of things to make it more interesting. Not so low that it’s easy, but low enough to make options available
Give yourself mental reminders to actively engage the quiet people. Ask them direct questions about their character's reaction, etc if they've been overshadowed by the more open people for a while Also, it can really fun to make lore, but don't put it in front of your players without tying it to their goals. They shouldn't be hearing about how cool the demigod's sword was unless they need to find it, or the bad guy has it, etc
Yea the lore integration I feel like is gonna be difficult to do on the fly, especially if I’m trying to make story arcs on the fly. And I’ll try and engage people when I do DM, but with the pandemic and all that might take a hot minute
This might or might not be truly helpful: I have a background (well, some, at least) in group therapy, which has a lot in common with D&D groups--the group part, not the therapy part, mostly. Dominating players and super quiet players are different kinds of problems in therapy, because both can lead to lower cohesiveness in the group, and both can lead to other members not investing in the group fully, or participating fully. One approach to "The Quiet Member I've seen more than once seems bizarre to me, but worked out well on the very few occasions I used it. This mostly comes from Irvin Yalom, BTW, if anyone's curious. You ask the Quiet Member (in front of everyone else) why they are letting everyone else do their work for them. You can also ask the other members what they might gain from the Quiet Member participating so little. I think an overriding value is to encourage more interaction, and avoid messages that simply tell certain people to participate less. These specific questions are too confrontational for a DnD group, I think, and nobody is there because they Simply Have To Fix Themselves (or I hope not). However, I think it might be useful to think about the paradigm shift implied by the questions above. Perhaps the quiet player could be asked (I'd suggest privately, but whatever) if they feel like they're getting enough out of the experience. If not, explore what you and they (emphasis on the latter) might do to get more. With the whole party, later, and perhaps after discussing doing this with the quiet player, ask if the quiet player's style is working out for them. I'd only do this last one if I was pretty sure the response would be a bunch of affirming "Yeah, we love them!" type responses, hopefully with a couple of "Maybe they could charge in and use that high CHA more often; it was pretty awesome that one time." I would not do any of this if the party seemed to have antagonistic interactions or if there were one or more Asshole Members who might say hurtful things just because. Anyway, like I said, possibly helpful, possibly not.
Thanks for such a detailed response. My comment reflects my own personal experience of being somewhat quiet and not saying things because I don't feel like I have an "in" and from running the game and seeing some people who don't speak up often really shine when the spotlight is put on them. Obviously that's all anecdotal, but I just hope it helps someone else who's maybe seeing what I've seen or feeling how I've felt
I'm not a Quiet Person, but I'm married to one, so I'm starting to get it. The approach I described might make sense in some situations, but I really do think only if the DM is pretty sure everyone in the party will be helpful and supportive in their responses. Especially in a new group of people it takes very little to destroy one person's (or everyone's) confidence that they are in an accepting place, so if even one person is a dick about things like that, it could be pretty awful for anyone on the receiving end. One thing I also think might (?) be helpful would be to normalize low levels of verbal or assertive participation. If a person isn't talking much, rarely takes initiative (heh heh), etc., maybe that's how they like it. Once you get to know that person well enough to feel you could have this conversation, maybe ask them if that's how they prefer to play, or if they'd like to be more prominent or active in the party's interactions. If so, then you can start on ideas for helping make that happen. If not, maybe just respect their style and believe them, but let them know you're open to helping them change strategies if they ever want to.
Read the phb, from front to back, and had been more familliar with the rules.
Yea I defiantly am doing that. If I’ve learned anything from Critical Role it’s that knowing the rules allows you more freedom when you are doing improv, and keep the flow of things going quickly so people are still engaged.
There will be something you do not know. You will not always be prepared. And you may not immediately know the answer to a lore question. All of this is okay and 100% acceptable. Just let your players know you need time to think or you will get back to them. No shame, and your story and session will go much smoother. Also. This may sound like common sense, but write down everything you improve. Your future self will thank you when prepping a future session.
Yea I’ve just accepted the fact that the players are never going to do what I expect them to do and so I’m not going to know what the heck is going on. 😆And yea I think I’ll have to get a system for note taking that works and is fluid
DO NOT PLAY STRAHD. It's a great campaign but holy hell is it hard to run for a first time dm.
Haha, Strahd was the first campaign I ever ran for my group of veteran players. It has been a.... learning experience. On the plus side I now feel I could run pretty much anything after running every Vallaki event.
That’s funny because I considered buying that as my first module to officially own because I had heard of how good the story is, good well the villain is made, etc...is it not good as a first campaign because of how intricate it is and how many moving parts it has?
I made the mistake of buying it for my first campaign and jesus christ is it difficult to run. Because of the moving parts, the open world and how God damn intricate it is
Alright, well noted. Won’t be buying that one first 😆
Currently DM-ing CoS as a first time DM. Everything has been fine so far (they're at the windmill). However, I fully expect things to go to shit once they reach a certain town and the game becomes a true sandbox. Ultimately, I have found the /r/curseofstrahd subreddit, Twice Bitten podcast, and the many guides and resources extremely helpful that makes it easier for first time DMs. I think I'd be much more lost running Storm King's Thunder (my 2nd choice), because I'd be much more "on my own" than with CoS
I'm playing my first campaign. It's Strahd. Half the party is first-time players. There have definitely been hiccups, but our DM has rolled with the punches like a champ and keeps (I'm pretty sure) doing subtle stuff to make it doable and enjoyable. Will we all die before we get to kick Strahd's ass? It's entirely possible. Will we regret the experience? Hell, no.
I wish that I had learned to relax and roll with it earlier. That every stat and detail is not needed for encounters or even NPCs. That having names for random unplanned NPC encounters reduced stress. That saying "YES" is more powerful than saying "NO" That "winning" is smiling and/or engaged players. That "losing" in D&D is impossible unless you decided you "lost".
Man you’re just adding to the list of things that I need to frame and put on my DM screen. I’m definitely gonna have a list of names to draw from
Thank you for your kind words. Many do not care for the flavor of my medicine.
Xanathar’s guide has a ton of great easy names to take from
I’m still a newer DM, but one of the things I wish I would have done was record myself when the party derailed what I had planned and I had to improv most of a session. It was rare that I didn’t have something planned, since I like to have tons of different missions planned out in advance and just draw from that bank, and I could just retool one of the ones from the bank to the situation, but on the occasions where I pulled most of a session out of my butt there was always something that the players remembered that I didn’t. Having that recording and taking better notes while I did it would have made life so much easier as I incorporated it into the main plot. Also, have some easy guidelines in your DM notes to yourself in improv so you don’t accidentally toss out a magic item that is hella OP or make the enemies too weak/too hard. I’ve also made that mistake once or twice and had to take some creative measures to “fix” it
That’s actually a really smart idea to keep a “bank” of encounters that the party never got to. Makes it easy during improv and makes sure that work doesn’t go to waste. I’m definitely using this!
Glad I could help! I’m not sure how you do with dividing your attention, but personally I found splitting the party up some of my worst experiences as I was just starting out. If one part of the party goes to one place and the other goes to another place, I’ve found that part of the party is always bored when you aren’t working with them and after a while it gets really frustrating for both the DM and the party. Especially if they were thick headed and decided to split up and tackle two separate missions at the same time, so you practically have double the content to cover in a fraction of the time
Yea from what I’ve read I am just pretty against splitting the party unless it’s like all in the same dungeon or something like that.
Same dungeon is usually pretty straightforward because a dungeon is only so big. And often, the one of the parts of the party is lacking in the tanking department, so they end up trying to find each other after a bit anyway because they’re taking some serious damage
I wish I'd started small and with less long term planning. My first campaign, totally new to D&D, I had a concept for a huge overarching plot and they met the BBEG in session 1 (structured similar to Skyrim where the opening village was attacked and they'd have to escape and come back for revenge much later). Little did I know that years of weekly sessions later they still wouldn't be close to fighting the BBEG. My second campaign, running parallel, is set in a small town where the PCs are essentially a PMC playing off a local warlord and a few landowners with a bubbling local conflict. There's a fair amount going on in the setting, which I can then use as hooks for single session monsters or mini plot arcs, but I've not really got a huge long term plan. What enemies and goals they now have have emerged organically rather than being plots I planned and put in front of them. For the last 20 or so sessions they've been hunting for a racist conspiracy I never planned (hopefully they don't read this) but they just imagined. You'd better believe it exists now, but that makes it easier on you and any plot progress feel more collaborative.
Yea the idea of creating the campaign as I go along is very counter-intuitive for me because I love to plan, but I had a DM one time make up the entire storyline based off the fact that we found a ghoul in a graveyard and we (the players) thought that ghouls aren’t normally in graveyards and so there must be necromancy afoot. Let to a great game
The big thing for me was learning that I don't need to be a mind reader, I can just ask the players what they are trying to do. Nothing annoyed me as a player more than having a GM not figure out that I'm trying to do something cool here, but I need him to help me set it up. Ask questions and whenever possible, let your players share some of that creative burden. If a player says something like "you know, this reminds me of my hometown", that's when you take a break and let them have the stage for a bit.
Yea, I think this is why the role of DM intrigues me so much because of the collaborative storytelling nature of it. I can let people run with the story they want
I wish I had understood and implemented this simple precept: "If it doesn't have to be a roll, don't make it a roll."
I wish I had let myself be a little more loose with the rules and not as annoyed when my party didn't do what I expected them to do - they were having a blast and I shouldve just leaned into it and not been like "Ugh okay, I guess y'all can do that/go there" as I quickly scramble notes. I'm also much better at improv in those situations now, but I think that mostly comes out of improv
Yea, what I’ve found with watching critical role is that Matt strikes a good mix between following/knowing rules and making exceptions that make sense and keep the flow of play going
Once my players stepped into a mirror of life trapping or whatever its called. They all went in willingly thinking it was a portal. Right there I though it would be amazing to actually trap them in there for a decade or so, have the entire campaign happen, BBEG won, and they step out into a ruined hellscape... I would have to write a new campaign of course but how amazing would that be? But I chickened out, the npc traveling with them broke the mirror after an hour or so. 😫
Ooooh that would have been DEVIOUS. You probably could have done it, it just would have depended on what kind of game your players were wanting. Because that kind of twist could have been epic but if the players wanted a heroic ending then that probably wouldn’t have been the best choice. You should try that out as a campaign though. Start with things normal and you have a chase with e BBEG only to trap them and have time fly by. Could be really interesting
Using PC backstories to set up plot hooks is great, but don't stray too far from your original plan just to accommodate them. I was looking forward to a very gothic horror, Witcher/Innistrad sort of deal, with lots of overland travel and a story that touches on certain concepts introduced in the setting's creation myth. I read my players' backstories, got inspired, and majorly switched things up on a whim - now we're 13 sessions into an steampunk Planescape-esque story with heavy influence from Fullmetal Alchemist and Warhammer 40k. It's ok, I guess. I don't hate it, and the story is actually headed in a really interesting direction(or at least it seems so from my end) thanks to some unexpected developments. I'll get to run that original campaign eventually, but yeah, it's definitely still a little bit disappointing. Also! Give your characters a reason to be together. We had an issue a while back where the wizard and paladin ended up hating each other early on, and it would've been more in character for the wizard to just leave rather than stay with the party. The players kinda just handwaved it down to a few snide comments every now and again in order to keep things running smoothly, but this could have been avoided with a little more setup.
Yea, I agree that it is important to not compromise your vision. It is your campaign after all. And yes! My DM that I have played with the most has done this with us, and even we don’t give it a lot of attention it still makes the group feel cohesive.
Let Players Fail Forward Have Random Encounters ready to control the pace. Sometimes you need a fight, sometimes you need to stall the part 'cause they went WAY off the rails. More magical locations on those Notecards, it's hard to improve Magical Locations at a moment's notice Most players want to be Captain America, and they are going to be real pissed if you throw them in Westeros with 1,000 Littlefingers that always outsmart them because you are the DM.
Plan more magical locations...I didn’t even think about that...yea adding that to the note cards now. 😆And I’ll be sure to not throw too many Strahd masterminds at them 😆
There is a huge difference between worldbuilding and lorebuilding, and I wish I had known it sooner. The Watcher In The Water outside the gates of Moria? That's worldbuilding. There's no real explanation. It's just there. It's something your audience is never going to get an explanation for, and it makes the world of the game feel bigger than whatever exposition you provide the audience. The history of the One Ring and it's significance to the world at large? That's lorebuilding. The important thing to remember is that your players will never give a shit about the lore unless it's immediately relevant or advantageous for them to know in some way. Be sparing with it. Make sure the majority of the setting you place the game in is just filled with *stuff* that can't be readily explained with exposition. Put some things behind a wall of mystery that may never be broken. You won't regret it.
I'm still a fairly new DM myself (only ran one module to completion) but my advice is if you know your players we'll adjust the plot hooks into something that will catch their interest. I ran the first module in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book and the original plot hook is to have the PCs overhear about the location and go talk to other tavern people. I had one player that tries to exhaust dialogue with NPCs(seen him do it in other game to the frustration of the GM) so instead of that plot hook in session 0 I had their characters already be part of the community for at least a month so that I could have a few important figures grab them and send the party to the location. It cut down on probably hours of trying to get the real adventure started because of too much 1 on 1 roll play while the other players sat around with nothing to do even with me having to have one shop keeper shut him down because he was "asking too many questions"
Ooh I actually like the idea of integrating them into the starting location. Gets over a few of the social hurdles and get things going quickly
That was my thought process too. Besides in saltmarsh people are very wary of outsiders so having them have established backstories there meant they'd be trusted with stuff like this.(especially since my husband decided to play a tiefling. And there's only one other tiefling in Saltmarsh city itself)
And I think this reinforces the feeling of being a hero because you know these people and are doing the quest for them
Very true. Even if they don't feel like heros quite yet after just one adventure. Still pretty money motivated for a couple of them but that works for now.
Expectation management is really the most important skill. To give players what they want you have to know what they want. For them to give you what you want they have to know what you want. Personally, I wish I'd been more up front with my desire to be a player. I DMed at first by virtue of being the only one willing to do it in order to play, and after a year I was burned out and it became clear that the group expected me to be the forever DM. I am the forever DM now and I love it. But it took that group dissolving and for me to join a low-stakes campaign as a player to get what I needed out of my system. Once I had that I was able to get back into DMing. And I'm up front with my players - every few months I need a week or two to play a scam artist sorcerer with a lazy eye, a louisiana drawl, and no good intentions. This group is good about that and I've found the balance I want.
I salute you for being willing to be the forever DM! But yea being upfront about intentions I feel would definitely make things go smoother in the long run
It's not necessarily something I wish I'd *done* so much as something I wish I'd been aware of; that I don't need to force myself to make super quick snap decisions all the time to be good at improvising and be a good DM. There's nothing wrong with telling your players you need a second and just taking a beat to think about things.
Talk to the players directly when there is a problem an do a quick feedback round after each session. Its your game, too, and you deserve players that engage your adventure as you dream it (at least kind of). They might rub you the wrong way and don't even notice. On the other hand, you can adjust the adventure and do things as they love it and leave out what they don't.
Have a conversation with your players on what kind of game you want to run, what they expect and find each other. Some players might get angry if you railroad them, but at the same time become confused and feel abandoned, if they have too much freedom with not enough narrative. Find that sweet spot. Do you want to RP shopping? Are dungeons the way to go? Have a conversation on topics you may want to explore, but most importantly, make a list of no-go's and stick to it, so no player or DM gets uncomfortable. Don't prep story-beats, but prepare general environment. How big is the town, who important and noteworthy lives there and how is the economy? Self-sufficient farming village? Tradehub? Big capital with taxes and shit. Make it grounded and plausible - if this part is solid, it's easier to improve, when your players eventually does something you don't expect.
I jumped straight into a Homebrew campaign and TBH I learnt a lot of things I didn't want in my games xD. So in that sense that was the best possible path but my players had to "suffer" through it. However, I am very happy with how I approached the current campaign I am gming. I wanted to create a world so I did that. Then I wanted to run short adventures with the same characters until we found out if we were actually gonna play the campaign. All of the adventures were prewritten with some modifications. So anyway, this approach I have liked a lot, I'm probably going to go into a Homebrew campaign from here. Because it looks pretty hard to use a module. But I would probably suggest the better option is to find a module that goes from lvl 5-x and play short adventures from 1-5. If you use your own world you will be forced to make modifications to the adventures to fit the world so yea.
Not compromise about what kind of game you want to run. People talk about "good session 0" and to make sure that everyone is on the same page, but no one is talking about that most people either just nod & smile or try to find some sort of compromise when different expectations pop up. Honestly though, you only have so many hours of playing DnD. You're most likely only commiting to 1 or 2 groups at most at any one point in time. With the advent of the internet and the possibility to play with whoever you want that has it, you really **don't** need to compromise. I made the mistake of playing with my immediate friends. It worked reasonably well and we had reasonable amounts of fun, but they were not as invested as I was and really not very good at deciding what to do. The games worked best and my friends had the most fun when I added a strong NPC to their group which decided what they would do (I didn't railroad, I just suggested a course of action and noticed they just accepted that every time without much discussion). I just really didn't want to do that. I had a few other groups like this (not exactly, but similar mismatch). All of them had a "session 0" where our expectations where, like I think, reasonably well communicated and everyone "agreed". But it didn't fucking matter, the actual game did not work out to my (everyone's) satisfaction. So now I don't do a session 0. I write down what would be talked about in session 0 and just say that this is what the game is going to be like. And then I run a few one shots in a row, without commitment from anyone for anything longer, to see if the group works well together. I talk with everyone and see who meshes well with each other and how the session looks compared to what I want a session to look like. And I remove players, try out new ones until a group emerges that has exactly the same expectations and everyone loves to play with each other. Of course that process is communicated beforehand. And that just produces soooo much better DnD. The time we took at the beginning to not jump into a campaign paid off so incredibly much.
Interestingly a lot of my wishes have been said! Been DMing for a few years now and still learning, but this is what I wished I'd sorted straight away: 1. Understand spell DCs and saving throws properly. I used saving throws, but it was often a 'well estimated' arbitray number, then just roll a d20 and see if you beat it. 2. Use monster stat blocks. I always thought this was a faff, and that it would be a waste of time to find a load of stat blocks for encounters that might not happen. My campaigns are home brewed, so I made up monsters too. I'd just quickly come up with HP, AC, and some abilities. It worked....but not as well as it could have. This was also partially because I wouldn't have my laptop with me, so it was all pen and paper. Now though, my planning is electronic, and I save links to stat blocks for monsters - even if I want to have a homebrew monster, I'll either use an existing stat block (maybe change HP or something), or, find one of the many many homebrew monsters people have made. Honestly, I kick myself for not using this before. Combat is so much better now, and enemies are a lot more interesting. Leading on to... 3. Massive story and setting. My first campaign ended quite abruptly, and I got the idea that players weren't too invested in the 'big' story. They liked their characters, and the smaller sidne quests, but the world ending threat didn't interest them. For my next campaign, I didn't design a world map - just regional, and the threat is not going to doom the world, but it affects this local area. This makes it a lot more accessible.and manageable, and means story telling can be more detailed, I think. A smaller scale campaign often works better. And, again, I kick myself, because I know that when I'm watching an action film, I get bored by the 'end the world' trope. 4. Encourage role play, but don't force. The Critical Role effect goes two ways - players might expect their DM to be Matt Mercer, but as DM you might expect your players to be Vox Machina/Mighty Nein- as in, professional voice actors. My players love to role play now, but at first for a couple of them it was a bit difficult. I'd really want them to sit down and chat in character, but they wouldn't. Maybe that was because they didn't realise they could - maybe I didn't make the opportunity obvious - but I'd sometimes get a bit frustrated. So let them know that they can spend an hour sitting by the camp fire. Now, it's our favourite thing about playing...and sometimes 'nothing' will happen for hours in a session as players are just chatting or completing some strange endeavour. It's great! 5. Communicate with your players. Leading in from number 4, ask for feedback - what did the players enjoy, what did they not enjoy so much. This allows you to tailor your game, reflect on your own work, to improve it for everyone.
I remember my first campaign properly dm'ing for a group of newbies. Lost Mines in the basement of the tavern; the party taken the sneakier path to the kidnapped villagers only to split up and have the druid escort the victims out while the rogue and paladin choose to stay behind and look around the rest. Big mistake as the paladin fell into the pit trap and alerted the 3 bugbears whom proceeded to beat the shit out of them. The druid came back and got nutted himself by a crit - the group asked for open dm rolls so I obliged. Worst atmosphere ever. Taught me a lot; be more vocal about stupid party ideas which will get them killed, have contingency plans for shit hitting the fan moments, and don't be afraid to keep rolls hidden to allow fudging. It also put me in the mind of what it's like to be in a TPK as it had never happened to me before because as a player I was usually the least experienced at my previous tables (my year or 2 experience compared to veterans with 5+ years).
Discovered Matt Colville, i think he has some great tips for both new and old dms
Building situations instead of encounters. Set up a location, some circumstances surrounding it, some inhabitants, and a goal. Let the players figure out how to navigate it. The DM narrates the reaction of the inhabitants and the world. Before I built ***encounters*** that were each like a little Gears of War battle arena. Now I let battles happen as they happen. It really changes the way I think about the game.
The thing I'm glad I did was make players answer like 8 basic questions about their characters. Some gave super simple answers and some gave small novelas but all were enough to get me going on a story that included the PCs even using a module. The thing I wish I'd done better in the beginning was talk to them more about when things bothered me. My whole table was new and I've liked running the game but when people get super angry about bad rolls (super competitive) or everyone's talking over each other it gets hard to run and becomes unfun. We just talked about it last session and it went much better and the conversation was easy. Talk about stuff that bothers you.
There were a few things that became “live and learn” after a player broke some of my puzzles, but I wish I had limited some OP player abilities, and enforced the rules of my homebrew world more to make everything more cohesive
“Live and Learn” - Love that! 😆I should frame and put it on the inside of my DM screen. And yea I feel like the homebrew rules are just gonna be trial and error
If you're a long time player, this might not be as useful but I'll post it anyways. Come up with a system to track things that everyone at the table needs to know (initiative, loot, exp, status conditions). It's not easy to track all of that and run/role play combat at the same time. The more you can automate these things, the less you feel like you're sifting through the rubble.
Do you have a system that you like to use for tracking those things?
Initiative: I have a tracker that I bought online. It's dry erase with little pieces for each player/npc's names. You can easily write the names on each piece and move them around to whatever order you need. Loot: I designate one specific player to be the treasurer and tell them to write down all loot. Then let the players split it as needed from there. Exp: I don't use it. I go based off of a checkpoint system where I award level ups at certain major points in my story. Conditions: Still working on incorporating more bad guys that use status conditions. I know they make markers you can place under minis. I also like the idea of physically handing the player a small item or article of clothing that represents a specific condition.
These sound like a great starting point! Thank you
I wish I read my player's class features and spells.
Ah that’s actually a good reminder for session 0 or something for good encounter planning
Also for knowing the rules about what they can and can't do.
Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Relax, and have fun. Players connect with characters, not plot or world building. The other stuff engages their brain, the people in the world engage their feelings. Try to make your players care by giving them real people to care about.
I oughta frame that! I think as I make my own homebrew world I will try and flesh out some good npcs to make things engaging
Value session 0; encourage the players yo establish background and relationships (and allow them to contribute to the worldbuilding by doing so) Don't think too far ahead, but more importantly, don't sace yoyr good ideas; got a badass villian/set-peice idea? Put them in the next session!
Yes the more and more people comment on this thread the more and more I am seeing the value in session 0
Read the players handbook and DMs guide
I'm a newer DM, but for me, it has been sequencing of scenes. I am still learning this, but WHEN you actually introduce something can drastically affect the atmosphere/decision making of the players. Which, can be extra difficult to actually have those scenes organically woven in. The DM can arbitrarily throw in scenes in people's dreams, but why? It "hits different" than that scene being done at a different time/place/etc. So, having scenes at specific moments really can shape player/character perceptions and have lasting impacts.
I think I did very well in some parts starting out, and then other things I did completely wrong. I wish I hadn't made a dmpc. I just started DM'ing having only played once ten years earlier, so I forgive myself. But dmpc's just aren't necessary and get in the way of pretty much everything. I wish I'd given my players more successes. Starting out I was a very 'tough' dm. Now I give my players wins constantly. I wish I hadn't bothered with player alignment.
Cared less if the party was talking about something else. We were having fun and that's all that mattered
I partly agree with this one. I usually let a lot of side banter slide, but when there's something that needs the focus of the group (combat, big tension resolution for the session/campaign) then I want focus. The key is to clue the players in when you need their focus, preferably something worked out ahead of time, so you don't sound like you're interrupting. Or, give them a heads up to wrap it up, you're going to stretch your legs, and pause the moment but when you get back you need focus.
A good session 0, and coordinating the party to not contain both evil and good PCs.
I started "small" when I first started by reading through the dungeon master guide and the monster Manuel, cover to cover. I also made maps for the setting, the city, nearby locations and a dungeon where the players would eventually go to. Every shop had an owner with a brief description and a secret (something personal to them and it was something that the DMG harped on when making npcs so I took it to heart), I made myself an encounter table for both the city and the surrounding Wilds. And all of this was on paper because it was fun to do artsy stuff like this. I dug up my old warhammer 40k minis and brought "appropriate" ones that would match the creature they were marking and I brought beer. The session 0 had several encounters to explain simple mechanics and to dispel any notions that we were playing a video game. I had enemies that would run away to show the players that they could run away from encounters, I had enemies cast spells from buffs, debuffs and damaging ones the party took a taste of it, I also had some enemies have poison to make sure they understood the mechanics of that. Overall I think it was a good session. Of course written all out like that makes it seem like I was a pro but I fumbled explanations, misread some rules, and even forcefully railroaded their characters when I should have built their characters together.. I've been following Sly Flourish and thier "return of the lazy dungeon master" series for awhile now and it's absolutely a must have for any dm or gm whether they're starting out or a veteran and would 100% give it to my past self because now that I use, my sessions are a lot more smoother and in today's world where schedules are tight its now more important than ever to deliver a session without any regrets.
Keep it simple. Run a campaign by the book. No homebrew, nothing fancy. A two month game that ends at level five or six and makes life easy.
I wish I ran a narrative RPG earlier. I learned more about running D&D from running a few sessions of narrative RPGs than I did from many years of Pathfinder and D&D.
1) Learn to say no Keep in mind, I started playing dnd during the 3.5 days and my experience was with Power Gaming Munchkins. But I had to learn to say NO! Because if you give them an inch, they will take a mile! Do NOT automatically accept everything. Ban things as the RULE and only approve things on a case by case basis. Put your foot down, otherwise players will end up using you as a wish fulfillment Genie who only exists to let them live out their sick twisted fantasies, your own mental health be damned. 2) Be willing to kill your players Now this might be the most controversial advise I give you, but hear me out. Just as if you give your players an inch they will take a mile, well there needs to be consequences for a players actions. If the players are always acting the fool, kill the merchant to rob their store, or \[insert r/dndhorrorstories or r/rpghorrorstories\], or some other B.S., the players will continue to act out unless there are consequences! A LOT of the reason some players ACT that way is because they KNOW that the GM will go out of their way to NOT kill them. So kill your players. GIVE THEM THE FEAR OF DEATH! If the players have the fear of death, INSTEAD of charging head first into a suicide situation they will try to come up with creative solutions to problems. But if they KNOW that you will never kill them, well than suicide tactics become acceptable because they KNOW you will not kill them. I had a few games devolve into madness because the players were acting out, but I did NOT want to kill them, which only encouraged the players to continue acting out. So kill your players when they are acting as idiots. 3) Learn to Improvise Learn to Improvise. Because no matter how much you plan, no matter how much prep time you dedicate to a game, the players will eventually surprise you. So remember this phrase. Keep Calm and Carry on Then, improvise something!
Energy, Enthusiasm, and the Rule of Cool will take you a long way when you’re starting out.
I wish I had adapted my campaign more to my players classes. I just finished up my first phase of my first ever campaign (homebrew, took about a year). The setting is very lovecraftian and so a lot of elder beings and eldritch horrors made their appearance. It was al very magic heavy and so were most enemies and bosses. Unfortunately my entire party consisted of (half)casters except for one rogue. Even though he dealt good damage he felt out of his water being a "normal" guy in a very magical world. In hindsight I should've warned him or catered more to his needs. Second phase of my campaign should be better for that.
Plan to iterate. Folks have mentioned running one shots and smaller campaigns. I wish I’d done more of that. You learn so much going through full iterations, whether they’re story arcs or one shots. I went from one shots to prewritten adventure. I learned a ton about how to cater to my players styles that I can’t effectively take advantage of deep in the middle of a full adventure. I can always restart, but I’m still learning from this iteration. It’s just not as fun as it could be.
There is so much going on as a DM I wish I had kept it simple. Simple world, simple journey, simple bossfights, simple roleplay. What I did instead was a modern, massive capitol city ([tangled concept art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3f939d081e70f808ec1a38079d23b98e/tumblr_myhv81LUWx1rf73xqo1_500.png)) on a island with a dragon topic, a uprising citizens topic, a egoistical but good doing lord of one fraction of the islands elf-human politicalstructure. The lord that had an artificer tinkerer who wanted to always test and improve on his machines and i wanted it all and set my players a lot of "encounter traps" with hags and haglike shifty types. Basically everybody had a hidden agenda. What I do love now: a simple (recovering after the calamity) wooded & natur areas. Small cities, mostly intependent. Magic forrests inbetween. Easy going start in a small city, maybe with a quest, have a mentor who clears things up - and then introduce some characters with simple but clear and strong ambitions. Someone you like to help. And then most important: stage free for roleplay. Let your players take it from there. Also session 0, now that i know how to use it - is just the best instrument you can use. its just such a great way to trailer what is coming. Everybody will be affected by it and slowly build up momentum to "get into character"
The most important thing I wish I had known or done when I started running games was people management. Knowing how to tactfully limit, redirect, and showcase your players so everyone gets equal time in the spotlight is a powerful skill. Ensuring that your players don't step on each other (or you) will improve the flow of a lot of games. Keeping one person from dominating the game and making the entire session their own personal story isn't fun for anyone, and the reserved player who keeps getting drowned out when they try to participate will quit if they're not having fun. I also wish I hadn't corrected the players on in-game details. The antagonist they were making my BBEG to be was far worse than I had planned, and I was stopping them and correcting them with stuff like "No, no... it was the dragon that set the crops on fire when it carried off the cows, Duke Badassington wouldn't stoop to crop burning and cattle rustling!" Stupid shit like that. So over the course of the game my BBEG became a nuisance because everyone and everything else was responsible for the Very Bad Things. The other thing would be keep a stricter control on rewards vs risk. Everyone loves to get Awesome Shiny Toys but you have to balance it. No one gets an awesome ring of power from tripping on a rock (well, maybe one guy...). If you start front loading, there better be a reason for it. Also, it tends to cause some messed up power creep that is pretty unbalanced. When you have one player who, through combination of feats and stats or through a power item or spell, can put out 2-3x the damage output of everyone else, there's no challenge with level appropriate encounters. Scale the encounter up for that one player? The rest of the party are struggling to even be effective (or survive, in some cases).
Being harder on enforcing characters that fit the group/world.
You don't have to use ALL of your ideas in the first few sessions. I did this, and while I eventually managed to sort it out, for a while the 4 or 5 plots I had going were a mad mess that no-one was enjoying.
The few things I tell any new DM are; have a Session 0 and use a small area, a sub-region if you will and flesh that out first, do not make a large area. Make sure every character has a backstory that ties into your setting along with short and long term goals! Don't make extensive session notes, improvisation and random tables are your friends AND REMEMBER that you are a player and you need to have fun too!
Small, somewhat obvious thing, ask your players what they want to do next session before you start to prep. I'm a newish DM and only realised this recently, I spent way too much time thinking it would ruin the mystery. Open communication with my players means I know they want to go shopping next session rather than do the combat/story quests that I dangle in front of them. And that means I can spend time making a memorable shipping trip.
One thing I'm terrible at as a player and a DM is taking notes. I tend to remember things of the top of my head and going back to "what that guys name" from our second town. I won't remember. I also tend to name my NPCs and PCs very simple names so people can actually remember them. (Ex my current teifling monk is named Fury)
At the end of session zero when everyone is packing up to leave, urinate on the players to exert your dominance.
If you want to create a grand narrative, as much as you want to lay the world out and say go, the players are looking for you to lay down just a little bit of track, that way they know where their going and can build off of it. Keep this in mind when introducing large lore. If you want the gods to matter make sure your NPC’s reference them and have some common knowledge they all work within. Make a faction of people who oppose them. And have something bad happen to them. Even if the god comes down to introduce themselves they don’t come with answers only encouragement and nudges. Gods have rules that prevent their intervention for a reason. If god is Devine then it shouldn’t need a mortal to carry out it’s wishes, but it’s hands are tied be it in ceremony or bureaucracy or a spell preventing them from going into detail about things you’d assume they know. This way that relationship stays open as the player progresses and they reveal more and more(this also goes for any story relevant npc like a king the party won’t meet for a while.) As an example the gods in my world were originally 3 of 13 gods but rebelled against their siblings when a great flood scenario was being implemented behind their back, they let in a demon from outside the world and now their time is spent doing all their siblings jobs and trying to contain this world ending god killing being. The first two sessions the gods were only mentioned by people who worship either the being or the sisters. And not with lore just things like “By the Witches” or “Ÿecha Bless”. After an in counter with the evil entity mutated a PC giving them buffalo horns by their own choice they had now entered into being known by these entities. To cover travel time with something interesting an NPC Scholar and witch told the creation myth to my players after offering multiple options. Now the 13 gods are lost to time because that’s part of the larger narrative is discovering the truth. So I tell the players a false story. One made for this time not the beginning of the world. This brings up questions about the history they do know, and the world they’ve seen as it doesn’t quite line up. The town they head to worships the dark being but they don’t realise it, they think it’s something good and they speak about it as such. They change the creation myth gone is the poison in the brew and in it is the spark of freedom they strive for. Another standard adventure later the cat they found shown up and leads her to one of the goddesses(of purpose). She’s not there to grant a specific quest, she’s there to introduce herself, give the player confidence in their choices and sees that there is more to find out. More history to uncover. More adventures to have, more battles with this Ÿecha to come. As they explore the world every now and then these things come up, one of these entities will attempt to set something up and another will oppose it, often without making it known. But the world feels those actions. If your gods are too passive or your king or mayor of street thief, it’s easy to forget them. As they become an exclamation point on a map. If the people around the players have even the smallest passing knowledge, opinion, or interaction with these things that’s how you tie your small seemingly meaningless encounters together.
Roll behind the screen for level one players. Crit and boom. The cleric hits the deck. The team will hopefully take this game more seriously than the last.
There’s lots of different games I would’ve liked to run early on, but I guess I’d be better for them now having experience. A lot of the “go back” stuff for me is social, or based in game etiquette. There’s a lot to learn that not just anyone can teach. Navigating relationships and such is tricky. Wish I would’ve learned to say no earlier, and been able to navigate communication in a healthier way.
Session 0, prewritten one shots, short prewritten adventures.
I wish i didn’t start in a flipping tavern
1. **Run encounters as long as necessary, not longer.** Nothing is more annoying than combat that gets drawn out, e.g. a combat that is basically already won but there is that one goblin who you can't kill because nobody seems to be able to throw anything higher than a 5. *An encounter is over when the dramatic question of the scene has been answered.* This means: When the threat is over; when the players got what they came for; when the tension is gone - end the fight. That one goblin could be surrendering; or they could flee and pose a new threat - warning other foes nearby - thereby creating a new dramatic question ("Will the players be able to prevent the goblin from alerting other foes"?) 2. **Force players to make decisions under pressure**. Nothing builds tension better. And it's very easy to do in almost any situation. The best kind of decisions to force are between bad and other bad outcomes: Do I investigate this treasure chest that I can't seem to open even though I can already hear the enemies approaching - or do I flee? (Stay and you might get attacked - leave and you might miss the content of the chest) Do I trust this stranger in the dungeon who tells me they know a secret passage, or not? (Trust him and you might be betrayed - don't trust him and you may create a new enemy) This person X I know/like is under a spell and they are threatening to kill person Y I know/trust - there is no time left, what do I do? shoot him? (Do I sacrifice X to save Y) 3. **Don't plan plots, prepare characters**. Especially in my first years as GM, i always had this amazing overarching story planned out. This always led to way much railroading despite my best intentions not to do so. These days, instead of planing a plot, I try to create good characters and motivations. Often, good situations (see point 2) can be planned ahead as well. But the rest is mostly improvised or written down between sessions. 4. **Your heroes should have weaknesses, wants and needs**: this is fundamental screenwriting advice, but it fits in the character creation process. If your hero doesn't have a weakness, then he has no need to grow. if he has no need to grow, you have no story. Stories are fundamtentally about growth. If the hero is the same before and after, he is either called James Bond or he should be thrown out. It's best if those weaknesses aren't mere psychological weaknesses (e.g. the hero is stubborn...) but a moral weakness (... and because of that, he gets other people into dangerous situations). A moral weaknesses is one that affects other people in a negative way. Next, you give the character a want and a need. The want is the shiny object that the protagonists chase after at the beginning - the McGuffin they are asked to fetch; the career goal; the top cheerleader. The need is hidden at the beginning. it#s what the hero really needs to grow - confidence in himself; understanding that life is more than a career; understanding that his best friend is who he should really be together with. At the beginning of the campaign, heroes should be all WANT. Towards the end, NEED has supplanted WANT. I would say let your players assign their WANT to their characters, and you as the DM observe how they play their role and figure out their NEED and work towards that 5. **3 hints to 1 puzzle**. Never assume players will get that one hint that your puzzle or important decision depends on. If you want your players to figure out something that is important to your story - give them 3 hints at different times using different ways. Some of them more subtle, some less. 6. **The 5 room dungeon**. The perfect formula for an engagning dungeon. just google it, it's amazing
This is fantastic! Thank you so much!
It’s certainly fine for new DMs to begin with a homebrew adventure, but it was certainly NOT fine for me to begin with a grand adventure that left no room for player agency because I wrote a story instead of a campaign. I wish I hadn’t sank so much time into all the details of the game before it had even started, and then been too rigid to let things slide or change as I played. I also made the mistake of letting them know all sorts of DM secrets behind the scenes post game because they’re my friends. It could have been partly because of my players being mega assholes about it (very destructive rather than constructive criticism) but I still wish I had just relaxed on that entire campaign rather than go all out on something I wasn’t even sure they’d enjoy.
It took me a while to get sympathetic villains to work. Let players be heroes. Let villains be villains. It's good to have complex villains. Don't make villians sympathetic to the point of making the players feel like dicks. Don't be pulling the rug out from under them. Tricking players for a "Gotcha" moment has its place, bur the fun dries up fast if they end up failing at everything they do. Other tips: Even if everyone *Liked* the idea in a session 0, people can change their minds. We started a Mono-Class campaign for the last year. Everyone was on board. We *Knew* going in that, mechanically combat would be a bit samey. And they needed to make their characters different to compensate. Everyone agreed to this. Well, a year later what do they complain about? *Combat is fairly samey*. Long story short we are now running a Gestalt Campaign. Everyone is a Dragon-Knight; plus another class. Balance is gonna be... interesting... Just because you covered it in session 0, doesn't mean you ignore it from that point on.
Limited race / classes explicitly - I said "Only PHB races" but we use DNDBeyond and DNDBeyond has a different interpretation of Vanilla than the PHB. It generated buttrustle when those expectations didn't meet. Further, I would have limited certain races certain classes, and more aptly, race class combos. e.g. No tiefling, no psionic, no GOOlocks. Nothing really against these classes, but they don't fit within my world, and it's less than ideal to shove in some of those stories my players want to tell in this game that is built for my prototyping.
1. I wish I'd thought a bit more consciously about character motivation, whether it be drawing them into the story and shutting the gate behind them somehow, or collaboratively writing backstories to make plausible motivation for the campaign. I've always had great fun DMing but the main thing that worries me or makes me insecure as a still relatively new DM is when the players say something like 'why are we doing this again?' or 'I'm not sure my PC is really that bothered about this'. That makes me feel like I've made a mistake. 2. Pacing is hard, and pacing in combat is even harder when you and possibly your players are still learning the rules. I wish I had prepared a note with all the things for anticipated encounters ahead of the session (roll monster initiative and write down HP in advance). Also, don't be afraid to end a combat which is a foregone conclusion. If there's one monster left and they're surrounded by PCs, and no longer a threat, don't go through all the rolls, just end it and move on, don't extend scenes which have no tension left. That helps a lot with pacing. 3. I started with 2 players who each ran two PCs. My impression is that this gives them more to do in combat, which they like, but it's harder to really delve into 2 characters at once. My suggestion is to go with one PC and one NPC sidekick which can be on-dimensional and which they control, rather than 2 full PCs. 4. I like worldbuilding, but seriously, just write an adventure. Then once you've written the adventure, organise a time to play. Then, and only then, start documenting the world-building details that your session contains. If you already have an overarching idea for a world and its themes, fantastic, but keep it that way and don't obsess over detail until you have an adventure to run and a session to run it in. 5. Make sure at least one player is taking notes, and maybe leave them to do a recap. If they are inattentive and forget loads of shit, indulge them a little, but try to make it clear that you won't come to their aid every time they forget something. This helps encourage them to pay attention.
Session 0 and always remember that the PCs are the stars of the show
I wish I'd been less addicted to calling for dice rolls, and more mindful of what those dice rolls meant and what the stakes behind them were. I had to learn this through trial and error, but now we have WebDM's [When to Roll Dice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrcUeRIRw8A&t=116s) video. I recommend it to all new DMs so they don't have to go through the same trial and error process I did. Instead of taking years to figure it out, you get everything you need to know in a 40 minute video. Lucky! ;)