Hey, I’m running my first game of D&D. It’s a very standard 5e homebrew. I’ve played a fair amount of TTRPGs, though hardly any 5e. My one 5e game was Curse of Strahd, which was shut down by the pandemic.
I’m just looking for generic advice and tips. The group is a bunch of awesome folks, and we had a good time rolling up characters and starting the story. I’ve already learned that the players are going to dictate a lot of what happens and I’ll need to improvise and roll with it.
I’m not sure what to expect from this thread, so whatever you can think of is great.
Are you (and your players) more interested in a campaign with some arcs (like in a tv serie) or do you plan to play a scenario,and reroll other characters for another scenario? Or do you (they) prefer an open sandbox approach, with them interacting with the world?
Good question. There’s a bit of a railroad plot at first, but when they get to the big city, I’m planning on a sandbox world, which will be able to work if players can’t make it. There is a big bad (an elder god) and a storyline, but a lot of adventures of the week, at least in the beginning.
Yeah, I’d say one of the first things you want to know is if the players want to go on an epic, somewhat guided adventure or if they just want a sandbox to play around in. That’ll determine a lot about how you should run things so people don’t feel like each session is just spinning their wheels without progress or feel railroaded and “I thought we could do whatever in these games”
For new players, I’d recommend one of the 5e starter adventures. Lost Mine of Phandelver is still considered a classic and is intended to be easy on everyone (players and new DMs). Even if you don’t want to set in the Forgotten Realms, you could import it into your world or run it as a one-off to get everyone educated about the game and its rules.
[Edit: I wrote that before I saw that you have a campaign set up already! I agree that a good run of Monster of the Week style games is a good start]
Alternately, recognize that your cool boss encounters will drop very quickly if it’s one big bad guy against 4-5 PCs. Four people rolling d20s and with a wide array of tricks against a single ogre or troll or whatever will drop it even if it looks on paper like a powerful fight. Adding in some lower level buddies to help divert attention can turn a beatdown into an earned victory. I agree though that having ten enemies take turns gets boring and sloggy.
(Really, learning combat balancing is an art and you just have to hit that learning curve)
When I ran a campaign that mostly stuck around a big city, I made a fairly detailed map of the local neighborhood, and only had a rough sketch of more distant parts of the city. I assigned different businesses, temples, or taverns to locations on the map, or made the location a house, and I picked from a random list of names for the owners. So, building 3 might be Durgo the Magnificent’s magic shop, and building 4 might be Arno Strongarm’s house, etc. Whichever places they went frequently, I would start making up stuff, fleshing it out, and writing it down for later continuity. I would act like I already knew all about each location, but it was mostly improvisation. Unused locations stayed as names on the list. Basically, it was a whole bunch of hooks, and whichever ones they bit on, I would start using as the basis for future adventures. It gave them the illusion that I had this big area all planned out, when all I really did was give myself a crutch for improvising.
I was definitely overthinking the details of the city. Im going to have a few landmarks–arena, wizards tower, governor’s building–and an idea of what they can expect in other places, like residences or warehouses.
It’s a port city. I’ve basically reinvented Waterdeep. But it’s my own giant port city.
To be clear, what’s homebrew about it? If it’s your first time, I wouldn’t recommend making up too much on your own, not least because it’s a lot of work. And if you’re homebrewing anything about the mechanics, it’s really easy to break things if you don’t know what you’re doing.
If your players have a base (tavern, house,whatever,…) try to think in advance: what will they want to buy/steal? what do they need? what are their income source? how are they interacting with the NPC?
That will give you a broad idea of what to expect.
Then prepare some plot hooks, with standard NPC and more famous ones (wizard that can buy/sell magic items, high cleric, bartender,…) that your players will encounter more frequently.
You can use some scenario from magazines with a little adaptation.
And whatever you do, never, never, NEVER, let them think you’re improvising from thin air
and remember: rolling dices behind the screen and saying “who is in front?” will buy you some precious time for improvising.
Yes! We did it last Sunday, and got a bit into the story as well, with the players figuring out the empire might not be the good guys well before they were supposed to. First session is June 2nd.
ETA: thanks for those links. Looks like some really useful stuff.
I’m sure you meant that in jest but one trap that new gamemasters tend to fall into is overrewarding their players or giving them and easy out for the corner they have painted themselves in. All good drama (and comedy, for that matter) comes from challenge and uncertainty. Forcing your players to think through and suffer the consequences of their actions will make them a lot more engaged. It sounds like the o.p. already has some challenge in mind.
Other than that, be prepared but don’t overprepare. In other words, think through what they might encounter in the next session, and things like a list of NPC names and professions you can draw from or sidequests they might go on are useful for quick improvisation, but there is little point in trying to plan out beyond the next session, particularly in a sandbox campaign. Part of the fun should be discovering the world along with your players, so when it makes sense ask your players to describe a location or NPC that may be a former contact, and take note of story hooks they are interested in and expand upon them rather than trying to force or expect them to follow a plot that you’ve laid out for them because I can almost guarantee that it will never play out the way you think it will.
I don’t have any specific 5e suggestions or experience, but don’t get bogged down in debating rules; you are the GM and rulings, not rules resolve conflicts and drive the action forward. Some people suggest not even opening the rulebook at the table which is a bit extreme, but for sure you shouldn’t waste valuable table time thumbing through a book; make a ruling, write it down in your notes, and check on it later and apologize or make amends if it was incorrect (or ignore it if it is a dumb rule). The rules just exist to offer structure to resolve conflicts and challenges, not to constrain storytelling, roleplay, and adventure.
There’s a balance here, though, and it depends heavily on your players.
In my last campaign, I had one player that really, really loved the political aspect of the game, so I played up elements of that for him. The other players mostly just wanted to roll dice, so I made sure there was plenty of exciting combat, too. But the problem came when their “punch a Nazi” approach to politics started drawing the (terrible) king’s attention: when you blow up the secret military base and kill the mad scientist directing things, His Royal Highness won’t be pleased.
The natural consequences should’ve been a massive manhunt for them, and them becoming pariahs in any settlement, feared and hated by anyone in the king’s employ. But I checked in with the players: did that sound like fun to them?
Uh, no. No, it did not. The politicking player told me that real life had quite enough thorny unwinnable dire political situations, thankyouverymuch, and he didn’t need his recreation time to be full of soul-crushing losses to the bureaucratic forces of evil.
So I came up with an escape plan, a way in which they could tie off all that politicking in one final giant battle, laying blame on some other asshole, and go back to rolling initiative. They did not suffer the consequences of their actions, and we were all peachy with that.
A couple of things I stressed in session zero: first, no going against the party. No foils. No evil characters either. I’ve seen that lead to real life bad blood, and it’s not a game I want to run. It’s not like the rogue can’t steal a wealthy person’s jewels, but we all help each other.
Second, multiclassing is hard. I was tempted to not allow it, but I know some players have multi class builds they want to run. But they have to give me a story why they have these new abilities.
