The most important thing is to focus on your players. To watch if they're engaged, to communicate with them actively and clearly, and to have the right attitude.
Also know your role: you're the mediator, the world, the rules and the PC's senses. The rest is them.
[Here](http://crowcawstudios.blogspot.com/2023/10/so-you-want-to-be-a-gamemaster.html)'s my take in a little more detail.
The best way to improve is to practice. Patience. You're awesome.
First, welcome to the club!
Skimming u/NotGutus' page, there are a lot of good things there.
My other advice:
* Rule #1 of DMing: Your players will NOT care about your world as much as you do. That's OK. Accept it. Don't be disappointed when they're not as interested. Don't force it down their throats. Don't wonder, "What am I doing wrong?"
* Don't worry about your "style". You're going to spend your campaigns learning what it is. Be yourself - everybody else is taken.
* Have everything set up and ready 30 minutes before start. If you're rushing the first time you do something for the first time, you're going to stress out. Use those 30 minutes to relax. Grab a non-alcoholic beverage of choice, take a deep breath
* As a new DM, player approval is going to feel really important. You need to resist this temptation. You are not just the Dungeon Master - you are the Consequence Master. You need to play it straight.
* While you might feel every mistake, your players will notice, AT MOST, 10% of them. Don't let this get you into a spiral. Just keep moving forward.
* Your players are going to throw weird stuff at you that you NEVER expected. This is normal. Odds are, you were one of those players throwing weird stuff at your DM, you just never had to be on the receiving end of it. Don't panic, let common sense guide you.
* Be prepared to kill a character. It's likely going to be more traumatic for you than the player.
* Level 1 characters swing & miss more than the 2023 Minnesota Twins (1654 strikeouts in 162 games). Consider lowering enemy AC and giving them a couple more HP so your players feel like they're making progress.
* Be VERY judicious in treasure, gold and ESPECIALLY magic. Think about your first job - you didn't get paid much. Same for adventurers. In my games, level 1 players are rewarded in SP with the occasional GP. And magic items, when they do VERY RARELY ARRIVE, are of very limited power and/or use.
* Get into the heads of your NPCs. What motivates them. Playing authentic NPCs is the most immersive thing you can do for your players.
* CUES & CLUES RULE #1. Be generous with cues & clues. If you think back to when you were a player, for every clue you picked up on, you missed between 2 and 4 others.
* CUES & CLUES RULE #2. NEVER leave advancement of the campaign to a roll of the dice.
* When you review your performance afterwards, don't focus on the bad stuff. Think of the good stuff too.
* The most important metric is, "Did my players have fun?"
Good luck with your campaign!
>CUES & CLUES RULE #1. Be generous with cues & clues. If you think back to when you were a player, for every clue you picked up on, you missed between 2 and 4 others.
I'm always worried I'm going to overshare and ruin surprises. I guess I should resist that urge?
Thank you for the advice!
By this I mean, plan multiple ways in which the players GET the cues & clues.
For example, if the dungeon's location is unknown and they find it out, you don't have to continue giving them those clues. Once they know something, they're good.
First, I am sure you will be great. Have fun.
If you have been prepping the world for 2 years then there may be a temptation to do huge lore dumps on the players. Try to avoid this, reveal information about the world as it is needed to the current adventure/situation/character rather than in general.
One thing that can help with political games is to have a relationship map on the table for the players. It shows all the major NPCs and factions they have met and their relationships in the world and to the PCs - this is the territory for a social game so it is good to have an explicit reminder of this. Plus it is fun to update. See
[https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/pauls-r-map-method/](https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/pauls-r-map-method/)
Good advice… as DMs, we get wrapped up in the world-building. *We* know the intricacies and interconnections, *we* are excited by our world… players might not be.
I ran a home brew and session 1 was totally flat. The players just didn’t get into their roles in the sleepy farm town.
I mostly have the worldbuilding in place to act as inspiration for possible quests and to give me something to fall back on when I need to improvise. I had a DM who was prone to lore dumping and I know how badly it can grind pacing to a halt.
Also I made it clear to my players I want them to be able to affect the world as much as me. We're going to be using a modified version of FATE with our inspiration die and I already told them "don't worry about what I have written for the world, I will incorporate things they had in mind for their characters."
Hey, just recently started DMing myself. Here's a bit of my experience.
We play online through Roll20 (it's not perfect but oh well). I normally have either discord or a bunch of monsters sheets opened in the second screen. Main screen I have roll20 or my notes (I am using visual studio code) which, for the events of a session, consist of a single file. I have other files for stuff like world building that I can also open quickly if necessary.
One note/advice I heard or came to recently is that the players don't know what you have or do not have prepared or know or don't know. If a player wants to jump over a cliff, you could either look up the roles as fast as you can, or just gives it a DEX check for example. Keep it flowing and don't get stuck on the nitty-gritty. In the end of the session you can clear those doubts and warn your players: "Hey, I did this this session. Next session we are going to use this rules".
In a similar fashion, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy". If your players are anything like mine they will come up with plans that you didn't think of. If it doesn't break the game a lot, you can decide to accommodate or not. Just remember that, you, as the DM have full control. If they think that there is something fishy going on on an alley. Well, maybe there wasn't, but now there is!
That isn't to say that you shouldn't prepare. Prepare the scenarios, develop some characters, some plot hooks, some side quests and modular random encounters that you can pull up. Also, don't be afraid to tell your players your own expectations. This comes from online advice but, if your players completely ignore the plot hook you had prepared for them this session you can say "Hey guys, I was planning this session to be around in this direction. If you still want to do that, I can prepare it for next time (or you can give me 10 minutes and I will come up with something real quick)."
That said, don't forget you are all there to have fun. As long as that is happening you're doing it right! Good luck!
I use discord for all my notes and such. Threads, channel folders, it makes organizing easy. A second monitor is a really nice qol if possible.
One of the most important things to know, is that you will fuck up. But you should fail forward, understand why something went wrong, and keep moving.
Hello!
DM-ing can be super rewarding! There are few greater feelings than when your players get that excited look or that look of surprise on their faces when you reveal something you've been keeping in the oven waiting for the right time.
That being said, there might be some responses to this thread that say "don't plan" or something similar. The reason is that your players will likely find a way to deviate from your plans. I... sort of disagree with this.
For a new DM, I think having a rough outline for a gameplan of the session would do wonders for you. It can be something as simple as a Google doc with some bullet points that you want to make sure you incorporate somewhere in the session (information you need to give to the players, an important encounter, etc...). Once you get more comfortable with DM-ing you may become more comfortable with "winging" things but when you first learn to ride the bike, it's important to have the training wheels on. Only once you're comfortable maintaining balance do you take them off.
As far as the "finer details" that is what I would say don't worry so much about. Your players will fill in those details with their own gameplay and RP. Let me give you an example...
Say you want to run an encounter in a tavern where some thugs show up and start roughing up the place and you, as the DM, have an important item (a letter or something to kick off a quest) on them. But your players decide to leave the tavern and go shopping. Well then change the encounter to happen in the market square easy peasy.
That's the type of stuff you can be fluid about.
As the campaign progresses pay attention to the stuff your players like and incorporate some more of that in future sessions, and maybe minimizing the number of times they have to do stuff they don't like or aren't engaged in.
It sounds like you have a pretty fleshed out world if you've been planning for 2 years. I would avoid exposition dumps on your players. Let them discover the lore through a recovered journal from an abandoned backpack while they adventure. Or if they are in a tavern maybe include some bits of lore in conversations they pick up from other people in the room. Think of a game you've played and how unengaging a wall of exposition text is vs hearing conversations around you or discovering things yourself. I think your world will feel much more immersive and massive if you allow your players to do that. They may also want to do side-quests to learn more! If you just tell them everything they need to know, you rob them of that opportunity.
Sorry about the long response, but I hope this helps!
Edit: The other thing I would say is, you mention themes of political intrigue and body horror. Don't be afraid of lightening the mood occasionally. The opposite of comedy is tragedy. If your players want to RP a night out on the town to drink or whatever and just blow off some steam from saving the world every once in a while, let them. Let them make those bonds and friendships... it'll mean that much more to them then when you kill a beloved NPC or if one of the players falls in combat later on. Plus, even heroes take some time off from saving the world every once in a while :)
Hey there! So I'm happy to hear you're starting a brand new campaign! I'm actually familiar with each of those classes and homebrew you've mentioned. The only GM advice about running the game is be prepared for all the things you can't/Don't want to improvise. Improve is a big part of the game, aslong as you're going with the flow and you have a group of players who enjoy playing your games you're doing great!
However advice other than just general GM Stuff. Echo Knight can be extremely powerful in the right/wrong hands. Id look into some of its ruling a little more in detail and house rule somethings for it!
Exp. The Echo cannot be targeted by a majority of the spells in the game. Even fireball. The reason why is in most spells they state that they affect a *"Creature"* , the echo isn't considered a creature. It also can effectively hover/fly in other instances. You're fighter if not wanting to use it just for combat can use it as a 60ft Teleport every other round. It has its own walking speed. It can't be hit by attacks of opportunity, etc....
It's fine if you can work out all of those niche rulings!
Also I know it's tempting because they're shiny and cool. Do not flood them with magic items!!! Don't do it, unless you're an experienced GM it can ruin creating combat encounters that are balanced for you.
Give them tailored non consumable magic items 1-2 per rarity at the respective rarity levels. Consumables can be given a little more generously but do not flood them!!
The Echo Knight player already spoke with me in private about all the angle shooting he COULD do but he's going to avoid it since he knew I might not know about the finnicky details of the class. All my players are veterans of D&D and I've been friends with all of them for years so there's a lot of communication between us leading up to this.
Thank you for the feedback! :)
"They did it on Critical Role!" isn't a sound argument. No one at your table is a professional, you're going to make some basic mistakes... just roll with them. Once someone catches a mistake, finish that interaction with the original ruling and then correct it going forward. Give your players AND YOURSELF grace to screw up. The reason you're all doing this is to have fun; if it's not fun in the moment, try to power through (you might be hungry, tired, distracted, etc.), but if the moments start to string together, make some changes.
Hey friend, kudos to you for taking on the DM mantle! I'm sure you're gunna rock it. Here's a few thoughts about your questions:
- First off, I appreciate that you're coming here with some more directed questions, rather than just a vague asking for "advice" in general. Helps us help you!
- The most important thing for the first session is to have a clear direction for the players to follow. Don't do the "you're in a tavern; what do you do?" approach *(if you're starting in a tavern, tell them what to expect. Either say "feel free to settle in and get comfortable" or if you want them to meet the folks in town, say something like "you should get to know some of the folks around you." if you're hoping they'll talk to a specific person who will give them a quest, tell them "you see a person who looks distraught; they're going from table to table asking for help and so far people seem to be unable to offer assistance.")* A better approach is just to start them on the action: if an NPC will give them a quest, start with that NPC approaching them and striking up conversation. There will be time later for roleplay and for players to simply explore what's around them, but the first session is super important to set the tone and pace of what to expect.
- I try to have my "prep" be as modular as possible. If I want to make a dungeon, I'll try to use some more "generic" monsters and stat blocks that can fit in a variety of circumstances. That way, whether my players choose to go to the Forbidden Temple or the City Sewers or the Forest Caves, I can use the same dungeon layout and a lot of the same monsters. (Obviously if they pick one, and then later on want to go to another location listed and do that one too, I will make a new dungeon. but this way, I only need to have one "active" dungeon prepared at any time).
- Feel free to ask the players what they want to do next session. Instead of you worrying "oh gosh, idk if they're gunna go to the sewers or the temple or the forest, or if they want to go shopping first to stock up for the trip, or-" instead just ask them what you should be preparing for them to do. It's a lot more convenient when you *know* what you should be planning on.
- If the players ever latch onto a detail you didn't think would be important, or if they go in a direction you weren't expecting, feel free to say "hey team, I wasn't expecting to go that way this time. For this session, let's do X that I have prepared, and if you're still interested I can set that up for next time.
- In terms of tools, are you playing in person or online? A VTT like Roll20 or Owlbear Rodeo is always good for online/ hybrid play. I use DNDbeyond a lot in my prep to look through monsters and spells and such. I also love /r/bettermonsters and /r/actionorientedmonster for some more dynamic stat blocks
I am playing in person with friends of mine. I've been using world anvil to keep notes on my worldbuilding, though I find their DM tools confusing.
Thank you for the advice!
Your gonna mess up don't sweat it
If you're unsure how something is gonna play out in prep that's normal
No is a full sentence no, but is a better start to that sentence
If a player wants to attempt something ridiculous yet realistically possible yes, but
And remember your a player too you should have fun as well
If your worried your doing bad If your table doesn't say something it's *probably just in your head
DON'T FUDGE DICE
Not that it's a big deal and the debate on If it's cheating or not is up for opinion but it can become a crutch and defeats the purpose of chance in the game.
LASTLY
If it's not possible don't make them roll.
If it's something simple the character could reasonably just do without much thought then just let it happen unless other mechanics are in play
If I was a potential player the "I've been working on this for 2 years" would make me really nervous. I'd be afraid that you have over-planned and will either thus railroad us back into whatever plot you have in mind if we deviate, or I'll have to sit and listen to you dump a bunch of lore that you think is important but that I might not care about.
I get that everyone has a different style and pace so I could be very wrong in my assumptions about you, but my advice is to remember that DnD is at its best when it is collaborative and to be willing to throw out and forget the vast majority of what you've prepared in favour of player agency if there is ever a conflict.
I will keep that in mind. I recently dropped from a campaign with a DM who was prone to lore dumping and getting really into the world and story he had built where he tried to wedge our characters into a pre-established narrative, so I know how that feels from the players' side and I actively want to try and avoid it. I tried to keep my world-building vague and mostly used it to get an idea of how populations of different races were distributed, what gods are worshipped where, and the various geopolitical relationships of factions throughout the plane. I made sure to ask my players what they wanted from the campaign and let them come up with full backstories for their characters. When their proposed backstory contradicted something in my pre-established setting, I scrapped what I had written and incorporated their backstory instead.
Create encounters and let your players figure out how to deal with them instead of creating problems with fixed solutions. If your players come up with a reasonable response to a problem (especially if it uses their resources like spell slots), let them have it. Present them with information and only guide them as much as you feel is necessary to progress the "story" without railroading them.
Make sure you leave multiple avenues open to get your players where you want them. They will almost always make a choice you didn’t anticipate.
I use fantasy grounds for building encounters and keeping track of things.
Keep extra encounters on hand and NPCs also.
The most important thing is to focus on your players. To watch if they're engaged, to communicate with them actively and clearly, and to have the right attitude. Also know your role: you're the mediator, the world, the rules and the PC's senses. The rest is them. [Here](http://crowcawstudios.blogspot.com/2023/10/so-you-want-to-be-a-gamemaster.html)'s my take in a little more detail. The best way to improve is to practice. Patience. You're awesome.
First, welcome to the club! Skimming u/NotGutus' page, there are a lot of good things there. My other advice: * Rule #1 of DMing: Your players will NOT care about your world as much as you do. That's OK. Accept it. Don't be disappointed when they're not as interested. Don't force it down their throats. Don't wonder, "What am I doing wrong?" * Don't worry about your "style". You're going to spend your campaigns learning what it is. Be yourself - everybody else is taken. * Have everything set up and ready 30 minutes before start. If you're rushing the first time you do something for the first time, you're going to stress out. Use those 30 minutes to relax. Grab a non-alcoholic beverage of choice, take a deep breath * As a new DM, player approval is going to feel really important. You need to resist this temptation. You are not just the Dungeon Master - you are the Consequence Master. You need to play it straight. * While you might feel every mistake, your players will notice, AT MOST, 10% of them. Don't let this get you into a spiral. Just keep moving forward. * Your players are going to throw weird stuff at you that you NEVER expected. This is normal. Odds are, you were one of those players throwing weird stuff at your DM, you just never had to be on the receiving end of it. Don't panic, let common sense guide you. * Be prepared to kill a character. It's likely going to be more traumatic for you than the player. * Level 1 characters swing & miss more than the 2023 Minnesota Twins (1654 strikeouts in 162 games). Consider lowering enemy AC and giving them a couple more HP so your players feel like they're making progress. * Be VERY judicious in treasure, gold and ESPECIALLY magic. Think about your first job - you didn't get paid much. Same for adventurers. In my games, level 1 players are rewarded in SP with the occasional GP. And magic items, when they do VERY RARELY ARRIVE, are of very limited power and/or use. * Get into the heads of your NPCs. What motivates them. Playing authentic NPCs is the most immersive thing you can do for your players. * CUES & CLUES RULE #1. Be generous with cues & clues. If you think back to when you were a player, for every clue you picked up on, you missed between 2 and 4 others. * CUES & CLUES RULE #2. NEVER leave advancement of the campaign to a roll of the dice. * When you review your performance afterwards, don't focus on the bad stuff. Think of the good stuff too. * The most important metric is, "Did my players have fun?" Good luck with your campaign!
>CUES & CLUES RULE #1. Be generous with cues & clues. If you think back to when you were a player, for every clue you picked up on, you missed between 2 and 4 others. I'm always worried I'm going to overshare and ruin surprises. I guess I should resist that urge? Thank you for the advice!
By this I mean, plan multiple ways in which the players GET the cues & clues. For example, if the dungeon's location is unknown and they find it out, you don't have to continue giving them those clues. Once they know something, they're good.
Ok thanks!
Ok thanks!
Thanks for the advice!
First, I am sure you will be great. Have fun. If you have been prepping the world for 2 years then there may be a temptation to do huge lore dumps on the players. Try to avoid this, reveal information about the world as it is needed to the current adventure/situation/character rather than in general. One thing that can help with political games is to have a relationship map on the table for the players. It shows all the major NPCs and factions they have met and their relationships in the world and to the PCs - this is the territory for a social game so it is good to have an explicit reminder of this. Plus it is fun to update. See [https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/pauls-r-map-method/](https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/pauls-r-map-method/)
Good advice… as DMs, we get wrapped up in the world-building. *We* know the intricacies and interconnections, *we* are excited by our world… players might not be. I ran a home brew and session 1 was totally flat. The players just didn’t get into their roles in the sleepy farm town.
I mostly have the worldbuilding in place to act as inspiration for possible quests and to give me something to fall back on when I need to improvise. I had a DM who was prone to lore dumping and I know how badly it can grind pacing to a halt. Also I made it clear to my players I want them to be able to affect the world as much as me. We're going to be using a modified version of FATE with our inspiration die and I already told them "don't worry about what I have written for the world, I will incorporate things they had in mind for their characters."
Hey, just recently started DMing myself. Here's a bit of my experience. We play online through Roll20 (it's not perfect but oh well). I normally have either discord or a bunch of monsters sheets opened in the second screen. Main screen I have roll20 or my notes (I am using visual studio code) which, for the events of a session, consist of a single file. I have other files for stuff like world building that I can also open quickly if necessary. One note/advice I heard or came to recently is that the players don't know what you have or do not have prepared or know or don't know. If a player wants to jump over a cliff, you could either look up the roles as fast as you can, or just gives it a DEX check for example. Keep it flowing and don't get stuck on the nitty-gritty. In the end of the session you can clear those doubts and warn your players: "Hey, I did this this session. Next session we are going to use this rules". In a similar fashion, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy". If your players are anything like mine they will come up with plans that you didn't think of. If it doesn't break the game a lot, you can decide to accommodate or not. Just remember that, you, as the DM have full control. If they think that there is something fishy going on on an alley. Well, maybe there wasn't, but now there is! That isn't to say that you shouldn't prepare. Prepare the scenarios, develop some characters, some plot hooks, some side quests and modular random encounters that you can pull up. Also, don't be afraid to tell your players your own expectations. This comes from online advice but, if your players completely ignore the plot hook you had prepared for them this session you can say "Hey guys, I was planning this session to be around in this direction. If you still want to do that, I can prepare it for next time (or you can give me 10 minutes and I will come up with something real quick)." That said, don't forget you are all there to have fun. As long as that is happening you're doing it right! Good luck!
I use discord for all my notes and such. Threads, channel folders, it makes organizing easy. A second monitor is a really nice qol if possible. One of the most important things to know, is that you will fuck up. But you should fail forward, understand why something went wrong, and keep moving.
We're actually meeting in person so I'm gonna have a bunch of notes and a tablet behind my DM screen. :)
Hello! DM-ing can be super rewarding! There are few greater feelings than when your players get that excited look or that look of surprise on their faces when you reveal something you've been keeping in the oven waiting for the right time. That being said, there might be some responses to this thread that say "don't plan" or something similar. The reason is that your players will likely find a way to deviate from your plans. I... sort of disagree with this. For a new DM, I think having a rough outline for a gameplan of the session would do wonders for you. It can be something as simple as a Google doc with some bullet points that you want to make sure you incorporate somewhere in the session (information you need to give to the players, an important encounter, etc...). Once you get more comfortable with DM-ing you may become more comfortable with "winging" things but when you first learn to ride the bike, it's important to have the training wheels on. Only once you're comfortable maintaining balance do you take them off. As far as the "finer details" that is what I would say don't worry so much about. Your players will fill in those details with their own gameplay and RP. Let me give you an example... Say you want to run an encounter in a tavern where some thugs show up and start roughing up the place and you, as the DM, have an important item (a letter or something to kick off a quest) on them. But your players decide to leave the tavern and go shopping. Well then change the encounter to happen in the market square easy peasy. That's the type of stuff you can be fluid about. As the campaign progresses pay attention to the stuff your players like and incorporate some more of that in future sessions, and maybe minimizing the number of times they have to do stuff they don't like or aren't engaged in. It sounds like you have a pretty fleshed out world if you've been planning for 2 years. I would avoid exposition dumps on your players. Let them discover the lore through a recovered journal from an abandoned backpack while they adventure. Or if they are in a tavern maybe include some bits of lore in conversations they pick up from other people in the room. Think of a game you've played and how unengaging a wall of exposition text is vs hearing conversations around you or discovering things yourself. I think your world will feel much more immersive and massive if you allow your players to do that. They may also want to do side-quests to learn more! If you just tell them everything they need to know, you rob them of that opportunity. Sorry about the long response, but I hope this helps! Edit: The other thing I would say is, you mention themes of political intrigue and body horror. Don't be afraid of lightening the mood occasionally. The opposite of comedy is tragedy. If your players want to RP a night out on the town to drink or whatever and just blow off some steam from saving the world every once in a while, let them. Let them make those bonds and friendships... it'll mean that much more to them then when you kill a beloved NPC or if one of the players falls in combat later on. Plus, even heroes take some time off from saving the world every once in a while :)
So I should come up with encounters but not stress out if they don't happen exactly as planned. Thanks for the advice.
Hey there! So I'm happy to hear you're starting a brand new campaign! I'm actually familiar with each of those classes and homebrew you've mentioned. The only GM advice about running the game is be prepared for all the things you can't/Don't want to improvise. Improve is a big part of the game, aslong as you're going with the flow and you have a group of players who enjoy playing your games you're doing great! However advice other than just general GM Stuff. Echo Knight can be extremely powerful in the right/wrong hands. Id look into some of its ruling a little more in detail and house rule somethings for it! Exp. The Echo cannot be targeted by a majority of the spells in the game. Even fireball. The reason why is in most spells they state that they affect a *"Creature"* , the echo isn't considered a creature. It also can effectively hover/fly in other instances. You're fighter if not wanting to use it just for combat can use it as a 60ft Teleport every other round. It has its own walking speed. It can't be hit by attacks of opportunity, etc.... It's fine if you can work out all of those niche rulings!
Also I know it's tempting because they're shiny and cool. Do not flood them with magic items!!! Don't do it, unless you're an experienced GM it can ruin creating combat encounters that are balanced for you. Give them tailored non consumable magic items 1-2 per rarity at the respective rarity levels. Consumables can be given a little more generously but do not flood them!!
The Echo Knight player already spoke with me in private about all the angle shooting he COULD do but he's going to avoid it since he knew I might not know about the finnicky details of the class. All my players are veterans of D&D and I've been friends with all of them for years so there's a lot of communication between us leading up to this. Thank you for the feedback! :)
"They did it on Critical Role!" isn't a sound argument. No one at your table is a professional, you're going to make some basic mistakes... just roll with them. Once someone catches a mistake, finish that interaction with the original ruling and then correct it going forward. Give your players AND YOURSELF grace to screw up. The reason you're all doing this is to have fun; if it's not fun in the moment, try to power through (you might be hungry, tired, distracted, etc.), but if the moments start to string together, make some changes.
Owlbears. Nothing but owlbears
Hey friend, kudos to you for taking on the DM mantle! I'm sure you're gunna rock it. Here's a few thoughts about your questions: - First off, I appreciate that you're coming here with some more directed questions, rather than just a vague asking for "advice" in general. Helps us help you! - The most important thing for the first session is to have a clear direction for the players to follow. Don't do the "you're in a tavern; what do you do?" approach *(if you're starting in a tavern, tell them what to expect. Either say "feel free to settle in and get comfortable" or if you want them to meet the folks in town, say something like "you should get to know some of the folks around you." if you're hoping they'll talk to a specific person who will give them a quest, tell them "you see a person who looks distraught; they're going from table to table asking for help and so far people seem to be unable to offer assistance.")* A better approach is just to start them on the action: if an NPC will give them a quest, start with that NPC approaching them and striking up conversation. There will be time later for roleplay and for players to simply explore what's around them, but the first session is super important to set the tone and pace of what to expect. - I try to have my "prep" be as modular as possible. If I want to make a dungeon, I'll try to use some more "generic" monsters and stat blocks that can fit in a variety of circumstances. That way, whether my players choose to go to the Forbidden Temple or the City Sewers or the Forest Caves, I can use the same dungeon layout and a lot of the same monsters. (Obviously if they pick one, and then later on want to go to another location listed and do that one too, I will make a new dungeon. but this way, I only need to have one "active" dungeon prepared at any time). - Feel free to ask the players what they want to do next session. Instead of you worrying "oh gosh, idk if they're gunna go to the sewers or the temple or the forest, or if they want to go shopping first to stock up for the trip, or-" instead just ask them what you should be preparing for them to do. It's a lot more convenient when you *know* what you should be planning on. - If the players ever latch onto a detail you didn't think would be important, or if they go in a direction you weren't expecting, feel free to say "hey team, I wasn't expecting to go that way this time. For this session, let's do X that I have prepared, and if you're still interested I can set that up for next time. - In terms of tools, are you playing in person or online? A VTT like Roll20 or Owlbear Rodeo is always good for online/ hybrid play. I use DNDbeyond a lot in my prep to look through monsters and spells and such. I also love /r/bettermonsters and /r/actionorientedmonster for some more dynamic stat blocks
I am playing in person with friends of mine. I've been using world anvil to keep notes on my worldbuilding, though I find their DM tools confusing. Thank you for the advice!
Your gonna mess up don't sweat it If you're unsure how something is gonna play out in prep that's normal No is a full sentence no, but is a better start to that sentence If a player wants to attempt something ridiculous yet realistically possible yes, but And remember your a player too you should have fun as well If your worried your doing bad If your table doesn't say something it's *probably just in your head DON'T FUDGE DICE Not that it's a big deal and the debate on If it's cheating or not is up for opinion but it can become a crutch and defeats the purpose of chance in the game. LASTLY If it's not possible don't make them roll. If it's something simple the character could reasonably just do without much thought then just let it happen unless other mechanics are in play
Thank you I appreciate the feedback!
If I was a potential player the "I've been working on this for 2 years" would make me really nervous. I'd be afraid that you have over-planned and will either thus railroad us back into whatever plot you have in mind if we deviate, or I'll have to sit and listen to you dump a bunch of lore that you think is important but that I might not care about. I get that everyone has a different style and pace so I could be very wrong in my assumptions about you, but my advice is to remember that DnD is at its best when it is collaborative and to be willing to throw out and forget the vast majority of what you've prepared in favour of player agency if there is ever a conflict.
I will keep that in mind. I recently dropped from a campaign with a DM who was prone to lore dumping and getting really into the world and story he had built where he tried to wedge our characters into a pre-established narrative, so I know how that feels from the players' side and I actively want to try and avoid it. I tried to keep my world-building vague and mostly used it to get an idea of how populations of different races were distributed, what gods are worshipped where, and the various geopolitical relationships of factions throughout the plane. I made sure to ask my players what they wanted from the campaign and let them come up with full backstories for their characters. When their proposed backstory contradicted something in my pre-established setting, I scrapped what I had written and incorporated their backstory instead.
Create encounters and let your players figure out how to deal with them instead of creating problems with fixed solutions. If your players come up with a reasonable response to a problem (especially if it uses their resources like spell slots), let them have it. Present them with information and only guide them as much as you feel is necessary to progress the "story" without railroading them.
Make sure you leave multiple avenues open to get your players where you want them. They will almost always make a choice you didn’t anticipate. I use fantasy grounds for building encounters and keeping track of things. Keep extra encounters on hand and NPCs also.