im still newish to the game about 2 to 3 months as of this post but iv been wanting to DM since i heard of dnd. I know ill be giving it a shot sooner or later. iv also been watching a ton of videos to learn as much as i can on both sides being a player and DM. Iv heard the simple things of having a session 0 and no matter what your first campaign will be pretty bad compared to your later ones are there any books i should get? i have the PHB i still need the monster manual and DMG. is there any books i should get on here for my players to use?
I prob wont even try DMing until at least 7 or 8 months later from now.
I am a DM in my campaign. I have just started out too. I have ratbag players who want to cause as much chaos as possible. THE NUMBER ONE RULE I will give you is that you should never be afraid to say “No, I am not allowing that”, if they try to blow up your story line (literally). Other rules to consider:
Again, say no to actions that could wreck your storyline that players do
Learn the rules: At least know the basic rules (No Dex save on melee attacks, warlock spell slots, multiclassing, etc..), as there are a lot! So just know the basic rule
So based on my experience as a DM so far, these are the tips I would suggest to you.
(BONUS: Force Backstories for characters, and if there is a warlock or Paladin in your party, use their patron or <entity the Paladin swore the oath to> to provide additional storyline features, and can beef up the enjoyment factor)
Also your campaign should be your own. If you like dinosaurs, make a Dino campaign. Same goes for dragons, space, medieval, or any other theme. This might make the campaign more enjoyable as the campaign is yours.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM: “Who’s your patron?”
Warlock: “Ummm”
DM: “Hurry Up”
Warlock: “yOu”
*All other players look at each other with utter fear*
__________________________________________________________________________________ Check out my homebrew: My Homebrew
It's your role to be the narrator, guide and some times referee but ultimately the campaign, the story, stops being yours as soon as you have butts in chairs. You need to find your enjoyment in DMing from your table's satisfaction.
With a basic understanding of the rules and a little creativity you can have a campaign that goes literally anywhere your players can imagine. The Dungeon Master's Screen Reincarnated and Chapter 9 of The Dungeon Master's Guide, Dungeon Master’s Workshop is honestly everything else you'd likely need to homebrew any encounter.
Do some one shots or very brief sessions as DM - don’t start with a campaign
get a feel for your group, understand your style, learn a little bit about how the rules & players interact
as a new DM it’s important to have a supportive group, you’ll be learning and they will be learning with you about how your style of storytelling will go
if you’re unsure about a rule during a session, make a decision on the fly and look it up later. It may not be exactly as per the rules but you are DM and you need to be in control of the table
its okay to get it wrong - run the one shots, have a supportive group and you’ll be fine
The DMG and MM aren't super necessary. Starting out, you'll likely find all you need in the Basic Rules, and there's also tons of great fan work available for free.
If I was to suggest one purchase for a new DM, it'd be Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Because one thing DMs really need to internalize is that it's not that serious and you should relax.
The most important things to remember when you DM:
1. Though you have the most power over the story, it is not your story—it is the story you and your players tell. Your players will do things you do not expect, they will break your story at times, and there will be plot lines they are not interested in. A good DM is able to pivot, allowing their planned story to organically evolve based on player actions.
2. You will make mistakes. Don’t be too upset by them or dwell on them too much. Acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on.
3. Ideally, you should be insightful about players and pay attention to their mannerisms and tones to try and address problems within the game before it reaches a player problem. You will still have player problems though, either because you misread the situation, are not good at reading situations (I don’t mean that as a slight—in my experience many D&D players roll their real world insight at disadvantage, so it isn’t something uncommon or necessarily bad), or because the player didn’t even know themselves it would be a problem and things went from 0 to 60 in a six-second round.
If you fail to address a problem before it becomes a problem, know your players well enough to have tough conversations with them, in a way that works for them.
4. Impose consequences (both good and bad) for actions, but do not make it feel like you are punishing your players (only their characters). A D&D world is alive in a way a video game can never be. Things can advance and move even when the party is not present. Party went to explore the evil forest? Perhaps the evil lord they ignored does something awful while they’re in the forest. Party chooses to save a small child, at great personal risk? Perhaps that child comes back later, inspired by their heroism to make the world a better place.
What you don’t want, however, is to have played think “the DM did not like my choice, so he retaliated against me.” Be sure to keep your consequences in-line with the story and organically grow out of the story, information your players had/could have obtained, and the player choice.
5. Be sure to have fun yourself. DMing can take a bit of extra work, but that does not mean you should not enjoy things like creating characters, coming up with schemes. Related, be careful to avoid burning out and do what works for you to keep your motivations up.
One thing I'd mention is not to overprep. When I was new to DMing, I wrote around 15 pages of the bad guys camp all for the players to... Go to 2 rooms in it. Unless you're writing a premade module- and I would recommend running one as some are really cool and easy to utilize - then I would suggest doing the bare bones, or at least not ridiculously in-depth. Dungeon Mastering revolves around improv, and planning and improving are both 2 sides of the same coin or whatever that expression means.
Also, THIS thread has an incredible amount of excellent tips.
Don’t even try to protect “your story” because it isn’t “your” story, it’s theirs. Your job as a DM is to craft and curate an environment in witch the PCs can run around, populate that world with interesting characters, and to set events in motion that lead to interesting events (conflicts and other situations) within that setting to attract the PCs’ attention. Whatever happens next is up to the players. If you try to “write a story” for them then I guarantee you the players will inadvertently mess it up. If you instead create a world for them then I guarantee you they will always find interesting things to do, and they will amaze you with what they can come up with.
Also, don’t be afraid to say “yes” to all kinds of creative and unexpected things the players come up with. They surprise the 💩 out of you sometimes with their ideas. That’s okay. Run with it, see where it takes the story next. You’ll be astounded by how often those ideas will take things places better than anything you might have come up with yourself. Often times this is when the truly memorable stuff happens. Enjoy it.
Otherwise, here are my general top tips:
My #1 piece of advice is to watch Matt Colville’s Running the Game series. It’s a treasure trove of great advice:
If everyone at the table is having fun, even if you’re not strictly following the rules, you did it right. If you ever find yourself wondering if you’re a “good DM,” then just look around your table. If the players are having fun then the answer is “yes.”
It’s okay to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. It turns out that’s the best way to learn how to avoid that mistake again in future. Making mistakes is not a failing, not learning from them is.
If something comes up at the table, and you cannot find the rule for it in about a minute, just make a decision, let everyone know that’s what you are doing, and that you will look up an official answer before the next session.
Reread chapters 7, 9, and 10 of the PHB, because the vast majority of all the rules that get used just about every session are in those three chapters.
Well, welcome aboard. If most of the folks here are not DMs, I'd be surprised.
First, I recommend you do two things. I recommend you play each class at least once before you DM a game. The reason is you need to have a bit of comfort adjudicating the things that will come up as a player of each class. I had not, and still haven't, played all the classes once yet. This causes me not to understand how to build campaign events for that class to enjoy. The players will play their characters for their own fun, but having a DM that can throw them into a nearly ideal situation once in a while for fun would be really boss.
The second thing is to begin building a world for a campaign. Think about the things that would exist in the world. Having a good mental picture of how the mundane world operates will help you describe places and background events in a more developed way. I want things in my world to seem plausible, and I believe others value this too. You will then have a library of ideas in the back of your mind for how to handle situations that might come up from time to time.
So play a lot of D&D as a player. And start developing ideas for how your world will work. If you see or hear about a good adventure idea, write it down.
I think you'll have a ball if you have a good group of friends to share it with.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Ive DMed many a campaign but only done two short sessions as a player. 100s of hours as a player is NOT required. There is no barrier for entry other than your imagination and will you do it.
im in 6 rn playing them almost one a day just trying to learn and have fun since i have the time also by then i feel ill have a better grasp of the rules then and the classes
Speaking of fun, keep that in mind. The Dungeon Master tends to do a lot of work to keep the game going. Make sure it's all fun for you. If you are having fun the odds that your players are going to have fun go up!
im in 6 rn playing them almost one a day just trying to learn and have fun since i have the time also by then i feel ill have a better grasp of the rules then and the classes
You are in SIX groups that play weekly? Wow. That is some serious commitment. Do I have that correct?
yea its alot but i enjoy them and i have the time no better way to learn then to play
im in 6 rn playing them almost one a day just trying to learn and have fun since i have the time also by then i feel ill have a better grasp of the rules then and the classes
You are in SIX groups that play weekly? Wow. That is some serious commitment. Do I have that correct?
yea its alot but i enjoy them and i have the time no better way to learn then to play
Do you see that 6 game a week rate continuing for the next 7-8 months? Because if that is true, you should be more than ready to DM long before then. As long as you experiment with different builds in each individual game.
i hope they do continue but you know how dnd can be when it comes to groups and times but yea im running different builds and subclasses and have backups ready for when/if a character dies
im in 6 rn playing them almost one a day just trying to learn and have fun since i have the time also by then i feel ill have a better grasp of the rules then and the classes
Holy Blibdoolpoolp. That's an insane amount of groups to meet with weekly, are your sessions 3+ hours long?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
I recommend you play each class at least once before you DM a game.
Gosh, I could not disagree more. There's, what, 13 of the darn things? You want someone to play AT MINIMUM 13 one-shot sessions before stepping behind the screen? That's wild. There's no need for that. You can literally start as a DM without ever playing the game before.
The second thing is to begin building a world for a campaign.
Sure, if you want to start at the deep end! That's overwhelming and needless in my opinion. My advice: pick a setting you and your players already understand. It really doesn't matter if everything in the game maps perfectly onto it. The point is for you to be able to easily answer, or simply not have to answer, questions like "how much does a beer cost" and "what'll happen if I cast this spell in public?"
Then, throw the players into a dungeon. You'd be shocked how many people seem to be surprised by the fact that DUNGEONS and Dragons is at its best when you're exploring a dungeon. Pick something small, 5-10 rooms if you can. Set it far enough away from civilization that if the PCs wanna go to town for something, they can expect things not to be exactly the same when they return. Then... Just let things play out naturally. You don't have to direct or try to bend things a certain way, just make the dungeon react the way it seems like it would.
Right now I'm running Brad Kerr's Temple of 1,000 Swords. It's great. Real tiny pamphlet of a dungeon. Ain't even written for 5e D&D. Super easy to run in 5e though.
im in 6 rn playing them almost one a day just trying to learn and have fun since i have the time also by then i feel ill have a better grasp of the rules then and the classes
im still newish to the game about 2 to 3 months as of this post but iv been wanting to DM since i heard of dnd. I know ill be giving it a shot sooner or later. iv also been watching a ton of videos to learn as much as i can on both sides being a player and DM. Iv heard the simple things of having a session 0 and no matter what your first campaign will be pretty bad compared to your later ones
are there any books i should get? i have the PHB i still need the monster manual and DMG. is there any books i should get on here for my players to use?
I prob wont even try DMing until at least 7 or 8 months later from now.
I am a DM in my campaign. I have just started out too. I have ratbag players who want to cause as much chaos as possible. THE NUMBER ONE RULE I will give you is that you should never be afraid to say “No, I am not allowing that”, if they try to blow up your story line (literally). Other rules to consider:
So based on my experience as a DM so far, these are the tips I would suggest to you.
(BONUS: Force Backstories for characters, and if there is a warlock or Paladin in your party, use their patron or <entity the Paladin swore the oath to> to provide additional storyline features, and can beef up the enjoyment factor)
DM: “Who’s your patron?”
Warlock: “Ummm”
DM: “Hurry Up”
Warlock: “yOu”
*All other players look at each other with utter fear*
__________________________________________________________________________________
Check out my homebrew: My Homebrew
Also your campaign should be your own. If you like dinosaurs, make a Dino campaign. Same goes for dragons, space, medieval, or any other theme. This might make the campaign more enjoyable as the campaign is yours.
DM: “Who’s your patron?”
Warlock: “Ummm”
DM: “Hurry Up”
Warlock: “yOu”
*All other players look at each other with utter fear*
__________________________________________________________________________________
Check out my homebrew: My Homebrew
It's your role to be the narrator, guide and some times referee but ultimately the campaign, the story, stops being yours as soon as you have butts in chairs.
You need to find your enjoyment in DMing from your table's satisfaction.
With a basic understanding of the rules and a little creativity you can have a campaign that goes literally anywhere your players can imagine.
The Dungeon Master's Screen Reincarnated and Chapter 9 of The Dungeon Master's Guide, Dungeon Master’s Workshop is honestly everything else you'd likely need to homebrew any encounter.
Do some one shots or very brief sessions as DM - don’t start with a campaign
get a feel for your group, understand your style, learn a little bit about how the rules & players interact
as a new DM it’s important to have a supportive group, you’ll be learning and they will be learning with you about how your style of storytelling will go
if you’re unsure about a rule during a session, make a decision on the fly and look it up later. It may not be exactly as per the rules but you are DM and you need to be in control of the table
its okay to get it wrong - run the one shots, have a supportive group and you’ll be fine
The DMG and MM aren't super necessary. Starting out, you'll likely find all you need in the Basic Rules, and there's also tons of great fan work available for free.
If I was to suggest one purchase for a new DM, it'd be Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Because one thing DMs really need to internalize is that it's not that serious and you should relax.
The most important things to remember when you DM:
1. Though you have the most power over the story, it is not your story—it is the story you and your players tell. Your players will do things you do not expect, they will break your story at times, and there will be plot lines they are not interested in. A good DM is able to pivot, allowing their planned story to organically evolve based on player actions.
2. You will make mistakes. Don’t be too upset by them or dwell on them too much. Acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on.
3. Ideally, you should be insightful about players and pay attention to their mannerisms and tones to try and address problems within the game before it reaches a player problem. You will still have player problems though, either because you misread the situation, are not good at reading situations (I don’t mean that as a slight—in my experience many D&D players roll their real world insight at disadvantage, so it isn’t something uncommon or necessarily bad), or because the player didn’t even know themselves it would be a problem and things went from 0 to 60 in a six-second round.
If you fail to address a problem before it becomes a problem, know your players well enough to have tough conversations with them, in a way that works for them.
4. Impose consequences (both good and bad) for actions, but do not make it feel like you are punishing your players (only their characters). A D&D world is alive in a way a video game can never be. Things can advance and move even when the party is not present. Party went to explore the evil forest? Perhaps the evil lord they ignored does something awful while they’re in the forest. Party chooses to save a small child, at great personal risk? Perhaps that child comes back later, inspired by their heroism to make the world a better place.
What you don’t want, however, is to have played think “the DM did not like my choice, so he retaliated against me.” Be sure to keep your consequences in-line with the story and organically grow out of the story, information your players had/could have obtained, and the player choice.
5. Be sure to have fun yourself. DMing can take a bit of extra work, but that does not mean you should not enjoy things like creating characters, coming up with schemes. Related, be careful to avoid burning out and do what works for you to keep your motivations up.
One thing I'd mention is not to overprep. When I was new to DMing, I wrote around 15 pages of the bad guys camp all for the players to... Go to 2 rooms in it. Unless you're writing a premade module- and I would recommend running one as some are really cool and easy to utilize - then I would suggest doing the bare bones, or at least not ridiculously in-depth. Dungeon Mastering revolves around improv, and planning and improving are both 2 sides of the same coin or whatever that expression means.
Also, THIS thread has an incredible amount of excellent tips.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Don’t even try to protect “your story” because it isn’t “your” story, it’s theirs. Your job as a DM is to craft and curate an environment in witch the PCs can run around, populate that world with interesting characters, and to set events in motion that lead to interesting events (conflicts and other situations) within that setting to attract the PCs’ attention. Whatever happens next is up to the players. If you try to “write a story” for them then I guarantee you the players will inadvertently mess it up. If you instead create a world for them then I guarantee you they will always find interesting things to do, and they will amaze you with what they can come up with.
Also, don’t be afraid to say “yes” to all kinds of creative and unexpected things the players come up with. They surprise the 💩 out of you sometimes with their ideas. That’s okay. Run with it, see where it takes the story next. You’ll be astounded by how often those ideas will take things places better than anything you might have come up with yourself. Often times this is when the truly memorable stuff happens. Enjoy it.
Otherwise, here are my general top tips:
My #1 piece of advice is to watch Matt Colville’s Running the Game series. It’s a treasure trove of great advice:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&index=1&t=22s
After that, here are my personal top tips:
Welcome to the other side of the DM’s screen!
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Well, welcome aboard. If most of the folks here are not DMs, I'd be surprised.
First, I recommend you do two things. I recommend you play each class at least once before you DM a game. The reason is you need to have a bit of comfort adjudicating the things that will come up as a player of each class. I had not, and still haven't, played all the classes once yet. This causes me not to understand how to build campaign events for that class to enjoy. The players will play their characters for their own fun, but having a DM that can throw them into a nearly ideal situation once in a while for fun would be really boss.
The second thing is to begin building a world for a campaign. Think about the things that would exist in the world. Having a good mental picture of how the mundane world operates will help you describe places and background events in a more developed way. I want things in my world to seem plausible, and I believe others value this too. You will then have a library of ideas in the back of your mind for how to handle situations that might come up from time to time.
So play a lot of D&D as a player. And start developing ideas for how your world will work. If you see or hear about a good adventure idea, write it down.
I think you'll have a ball if you have a good group of friends to share it with.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Ive DMed many a campaign but only done two short sessions as a player. 100s of hours as a player is NOT required.
There is no barrier for entry other than your imagination and will you do it.
im in 6 rn playing them almost one a day just trying to learn and have fun since i have the time also by then i feel ill have a better grasp of the rules then and the classes
Welcome to the fun!
Speaking of fun, keep that in mind. The Dungeon Master tends to do a lot of work to keep the game going. Make sure it's all fun for you. If you are having fun the odds that your players are going to have fun go up!
yea its alot but i enjoy them and i have the time no better way to learn then to play
i hope they do continue but you know how dnd can be when it comes to groups and times but yea im running different builds and subclasses and have backups ready for when/if a character dies
Holy Blibdoolpoolp. That's an insane amount of groups to meet with weekly, are your sessions 3+ hours long?
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Gosh, I could not disagree more. There's, what, 13 of the darn things? You want someone to play AT MINIMUM 13 one-shot sessions before stepping behind the screen? That's wild. There's no need for that. You can literally start as a DM without ever playing the game before.
Sure, if you want to start at the deep end! That's overwhelming and needless in my opinion. My advice: pick a setting you and your players already understand. It really doesn't matter if everything in the game maps perfectly onto it. The point is for you to be able to easily answer, or simply not have to answer, questions like "how much does a beer cost" and "what'll happen if I cast this spell in public?"
Then, throw the players into a dungeon. You'd be shocked how many people seem to be surprised by the fact that DUNGEONS and Dragons is at its best when you're exploring a dungeon. Pick something small, 5-10 rooms if you can. Set it far enough away from civilization that if the PCs wanna go to town for something, they can expect things not to be exactly the same when they return. Then... Just let things play out naturally. You don't have to direct or try to bend things a certain way, just make the dungeon react the way it seems like it would.
Right now I'm running Brad Kerr's Temple of 1,000 Swords. It's great. Real tiny pamphlet of a dungeon. Ain't even written for 5e D&D. Super easy to run in 5e though.
yea they are sometimes more
thank you guys for all the great info im writing it down as you post it lol
6?!?!? Hope do you have time for anything else?!?
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting