Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I'm almost to my first session as the DM. I have been a player but not a DM. I am worried that I may not have enough side quests for them, as the starting "dungeon" is only one room. Any tips on how to get more content fast?
I exist sometimes, especially when I'm DMing Curse of Strahd.
Random dungeon generators, random message board quests and random plot twists are all ways to whip up some new material quickly that you can pick and choose what makes it into your game.
One of my go-to resources is Donjon. There are others out there, and I'm sure they are great for their purposes.
Good luck in your games and have fun!
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Seriously, there's no shame in running a pre-made. You can even joke with the players about the bad bits.
I've never seen a pre-made without some truly terrible decisions made. It's quite inspiring!
Plonk down some cash monies on one of the official campaigns, or hell, run Phandelver (is that free?). Making your own campaign can he really hard (depending on how you do it). Walk before you run: get yourself a pre-made.
If you need an adventure for the PCs, then run a module. Frozen Sick is free on this site. Even if you don't want to run it entirely, you can just take the bits you want.
If you are determined to homebrew, as it's your first time DM'ing, don't try to design side quests. Stick to one fairly linear story. You don't need to be a DM'ing god the first time you run a game, and you'll find your feet through playing.
Thank you! I have all the adventures thanks to a friend and content sharing. Any suggestions for which one I should run?
I exist sometimes, especially when I'm DMing Curse of Strahd.
The modules are kind of terrible. They are extremely linear, do not react well to players exercising their own agency, and have stories that rely more on tropes and cliches than actual character or story development. They expect the DM to put a lot of effort into making the campaign come alive, and, at that point, you might as well just homebrew. You can use the modules as inspiration--borrow some of their maps and dungeons and the details about the settings, but run your own story within that given setting, or you can just take some of the more fun dungeons and transplant them into your own homebrew world.
Rather than plan side quests, let your party design their own side quests. Know enough about your world that you know what is going on in various towns and wilds, and then have NPCs talk about rumors and other events. Your party will pick what they want and will go investigate--so long as you stay a couple steps ahead of them, you can fairly easily design and ad lib your way through an entre set of side quests. So long as you keep a few generic combat encounters in your back pocket that you can easily insert into any possible situation, you will be prepared for the combat portion, and can just roleplay your way through the rest.
There are a couple of modules that lends themselves well to have parts slotted into pretty much any world (e.g. Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales form the Yawning Portal). This frees you up to have material, but not necessarily run a whole module that could take a very long time.
If you are then looking for inspiration and ideas, things like old dungeon magazines can be a great resource. There are of course also lots of content creators that put out adventures via dmguild, patreon etc.