As the title would tell you, I'm fairly new to D&D and I wanted some help. I've played a story with a group of friends and was wanting to bring my own story to life. I wrote it out, but I'm a little nervous to get started DMing. I'm a high school teacher, so I decided to do an after school D&D group for students that are interested. So far, I have four students ready to go. Most of them are new, also. So, how do I get started as a new DM with new players? Thanks everyone.
Play through the Lost Mone of Phandelver. This is how is started a couple of years back and I highly recommend it. It has loads of advice for both new DMs and new players. It's only levels 1-5 so it shouldn't take too long to finish, and you can run through your own story afterward. I'm sure the story you created is awesome and fun, but I don't recommend starting with that simply because if your lack of experience. Don't take that the wrong way, it is my personal opinion that you would feel more confident and have more fun if you already had a little experience. Plus you would have some knowledge of players preferences. Some like combat, some love role play. This knowledge will allow you to tweak your existing adventure so everyone has more fun. It's something I'm currently applying in an adventure that I'm writing. It's very heavy on social and combat encounters because that's what my group enjoys.
A major thing to bear in mind is: you aren't so much "writing a story" as you are "writing a part of a collaborative story"... When I started out I tended to think of it a bit more like I was designing a video game as opposed to writinga story, IE: think of possible directings that things could go and account for them as best you can, include multiple resolutions to situations using different skill-sets. That sort of thing.
Another big one I learned is, don't be afraid of your work going out the window. There's no real way to tell how your players will react to a scenario you present them with; and they'll almost always think up something you didn't think of. I don't subscribe necessarily to the "say yes to everything" DMing approach; but certainly be willing to bend things for the sake of fun; which, in the end; is why you're all there.
Another one: reward players who invest their time into your game. Players love it when you integrate things from their backstory if they've bothered to write one, if only to find out you actually read it.
I agree that what the DM is creating isn't so much a story, but the skeleton for that story to form upon. I really don't want this to get bogged down in granularity, so I suggest to keep the story to the dice and the players to decide, and you run the environment and the conflicts and such. The story will flow organically from the players decisions, and the dice being (un)cooperative.
I'm sure that you will be able to handle the job of DM just fine. You're placed in a position of adversity every day in front of a classroom full of people that have a varied degree of willingness to be there and absorb what's being provided. Being a DM will be so much easier, as the group will be more willing to be engaged.
Good way I've found to start off new players might be to run a short one-shot with a pre-generated set of characters. (Multiples of each might be adviseable.) Start them off with a short exploration of the world around them, individually, followed by a short combat encounter that affects them all collectively. At the start of the combat encounter, they all describe what their character might look or act like before they declare their first combat action. Followed by a short social encounter, consisting of themselves mainly, but leading to clues as to who/what caused the fight and a plot line to follow, and maybe some further encounters if needed. This will all be set, of course in your campaign world, and be used as a primer and introduction of the world to the players and the BBEG. Then, schedule the actual session 0 for character creation, social contract things, scheduling, safety issues and the introduction of the new characters/party to the game world.
Then try to figure out how to do this 8-days a week. Supposedly, there's rumor going 'round that if this starts in a school, it takes off like wildfire. And it should.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“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
Run at least one module first to get down the rules and story structure. I would say run some older content first, you could try The Village of Hommlet (goodman did a 5E conversion but it is large because its set to go from lvl 1 to lvl 7 - so it includes the full temple of elemental evil as well). Lost minds of Phandelver, does work, and it slightly follows the room layout I list below for writing your own content, but the overall Phandelver plotline, it ain't exactly great.
I would suggest getting some kind of organization to what you write. A blocked text description, highlighted Monster, Items and Actions so you can quickly see what is going to happen. Like the image below can make the game run a lot faster. Avoid WotC's approach where they throw a wall of text and actions unorganized after the text description.
Next, plot out via a flowchart of actions players take to advance through the area. Build up a mini-sandbox with enough content for the main quest and side quests. If players decide to leave put in an exit adventure or two. Always ask players at the end of the session what are they planning to do next and then build it out. When building out the plotline, don't put the players on the WotC Railroad, let them pick and choose. If they do leave the main quest, if its a necromancer whose raising an army, well if they go off to slay giants, there will be consequences as the Necromancer gains more lands, no decision is completely free of consequences.
The prewritten module as a starter might be a good idea, to give you a ready-made adventure to run, allowing you to see HOW it rolls out, pace and so forth, and let you get a better feel for how you might roll out your own, original work. Having a story you want to present and have them go through is ok, but unless they and you are fine with a very linear tale, I think you might want to partly develop all the surrounding areas of YOUR story, with places and some people and some events/conflicts/situations pending, to allow the group to wander, even if only a bit, from the main arc.
I am guilty of railroading badly in my campaign so far, but in order to keep interest and immersion, my main arc is constantly shifting, to align better with what the group is looking to do. Once they complete the first major event in my main story arc, a lot more options will open, as the countdown timer will be set WAAY back for them to finish the main intended quest. Being flexible and not writing too far ahead is best, as it allows your story to adjust, based on things the players do that you don't expect (this WILL happen, so be ready) In the campaign I run, our last session turned into around 4 hours of me literally ad-libbing EVERYTHING, since they got deeply involved with folks they were supposed to meet, say hi, camp out and move on. Expected interaction time: 10-15 minutes. Actual interaction time: 4+ hours
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The best thing you can prepare is situations. Never write stories, write situations. An example of a situation: The party needs to reach the fort, but are cut off by a raging river. Following the river one way leads to a dangerous crossing with hungry gators, and the other way is a waterfall. There's a bridge, but the troll guarding the bridge demands you give him a sheep before he'll let you cross. The only sheep in the area are owned by a shepherd who doesn't want to sell them, but the shepherd's wife is sick. If she was cured, he'd give a sheep away as thanks. Problem is, the herbs needed to cure her are in the grove guarded by a horrible bear.
This situation is really open ended, right? All I've done is describe some problems. If you have your monster stats and a list of common DCs, you're ready to go. You can run a session just using what I've written here. And it can't be broken. No matter what the players do, they're not going to break your story because you didn't write a story. If they break the situation, good for them!
If you want, you can further develop it, but if I were you, my work in that area would go into descriptive language for the locations and creatures. The river is furious and freezing. The shepherd is shaky but his eyes shine fiercely with conviction. Etc. And maybe I would come up with a terrain feature or two for possible combat. Some wet slippery stones that might make someone fall, or a triggered snare trap hanging from a branch with a rotting carcass in it that might make someone sick. I don't need DCs, I have my chart. I literally just write what I just wrote.
Your overarching situation will very likely not matter for a long time, so you don't need to focus on it or make it clever. There's a dark lord, maybe. He's bringing his army of darkness to kill us all. Nobody thought dark lords were real, so we let the anti-dark-lord temples get overtaken by monsters. Go clear some out so we have a chance. Good enough! Name the dark lord so you don't have to explain what he is. He's Vorlock the Grim. He's Ultimos, the Forsaken One. You can figure out how he works later, when it actually matters. Is he a vampire? A lich? Who knows. Feel free to tell tales of his dreadful claws or his blazing crown or whatever sounds spooky in the moment.
Props to you too take on this challenge. Though. You want to bring your own story to life? Being a dm is not about your story. It's the player's story. That develops during each session. Things change with their encounters and backstories coming to life in the game.
The players make the story with interacting with the world.
I have a story I'd like to run. But I can't because I'd be railroading the players for my story instead of theirs.
Most immediate and important thing to do is read the basic rules if you haven’t.
After that, try something extremely basic: make a simple dungeon. Break it up into some areas, then further break those areas into rooms. Now add some monster. Maybe a trap or secret door to mix things up.
Practice with those monsters doing mock fights so you get a feel for how they work, and fight the players with them in a compelling and challenging way.
You are now ready to run D&D.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
As the title would tell you, I'm fairly new to D&D and I wanted some help. I've played a story with a group of friends and was wanting to bring my own story to life. I wrote it out, but I'm a little nervous to get started DMing. I'm a high school teacher, so I decided to do an after school D&D group for students that are interested. So far, I have four students ready to go. Most of them are new, also. So, how do I get started as a new DM with new players? Thanks everyone.
Play through the Lost Mone of Phandelver. This is how is started a couple of years back and I highly recommend it. It has loads of advice for both new DMs and new players. It's only levels 1-5 so it shouldn't take too long to finish, and you can run through your own story afterward. I'm sure the story you created is awesome and fun, but I don't recommend starting with that simply because if your lack of experience. Don't take that the wrong way, it is my personal opinion that you would feel more confident and have more fun if you already had a little experience. Plus you would have some knowledge of players preferences. Some like combat, some love role play. This knowledge will allow you to tweak your existing adventure so everyone has more fun. It's something I'm currently applying in an adventure that I'm writing. It's very heavy on social and combat encounters because that's what my group enjoys.
Hope this helps.
Keep your friends close, and enemies closer.
A major thing to bear in mind is: you aren't so much "writing a story" as you are "writing a part of a collaborative story"... When I started out I tended to think of it a bit more like I was designing a video game as opposed to writinga story, IE: think of possible directings that things could go and account for them as best you can, include multiple resolutions to situations using different skill-sets. That sort of thing.
Another big one I learned is, don't be afraid of your work going out the window. There's no real way to tell how your players will react to a scenario you present them with; and they'll almost always think up something you didn't think of. I don't subscribe necessarily to the "say yes to everything" DMing approach; but certainly be willing to bend things for the sake of fun; which, in the end; is why you're all there.
Another one: reward players who invest their time into your game. Players love it when you integrate things from their backstory if they've bothered to write one, if only to find out you actually read it.
I agree that what the DM is creating isn't so much a story, but the skeleton for that story to form upon. I really don't want this to get bogged down in granularity, so I suggest to keep the story to the dice and the players to decide, and you run the environment and the conflicts and such. The story will flow organically from the players decisions, and the dice being (un)cooperative.
I'm sure that you will be able to handle the job of DM just fine. You're placed in a position of adversity every day in front of a classroom full of people that have a varied degree of willingness to be there and absorb what's being provided. Being a DM will be so much easier, as the group will be more willing to be engaged.
Good way I've found to start off new players might be to run a short one-shot with a pre-generated set of characters. (Multiples of each might be adviseable.) Start them off with a short exploration of the world around them, individually, followed by a short combat encounter that affects them all collectively. At the start of the combat encounter, they all describe what their character might look or act like before they declare their first combat action. Followed by a short social encounter, consisting of themselves mainly, but leading to clues as to who/what caused the fight and a plot line to follow, and maybe some further encounters if needed. This will all be set, of course in your campaign world, and be used as a primer and introduction of the world to the players and the BBEG. Then, schedule the actual session 0 for character creation, social contract things, scheduling, safety issues and the introduction of the new characters/party to the game world.
Then try to figure out how to do this 8-days a week. Supposedly, there's rumor going 'round that if this starts in a school, it takes off like wildfire. And it should.
“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
Run at least one module first to get down the rules and story structure. I would say run some older content first, you could try The Village of Hommlet (goodman did a 5E conversion but it is large because its set to go from lvl 1 to lvl 7 - so it includes the full temple of elemental evil as well). Lost minds of Phandelver, does work, and it slightly follows the room layout I list below for writing your own content, but the overall Phandelver plotline, it ain't exactly great.
I would suggest getting some kind of organization to what you write. A blocked text description, highlighted Monster, Items and Actions so you can quickly see what is going to happen. Like the image below can make the game run a lot faster. Avoid WotC's approach where they throw a wall of text and actions unorganized after the text description.
Next, plot out via a flowchart of actions players take to advance through the area. Build up a mini-sandbox with enough content for the main quest and side quests. If players decide to leave put in an exit adventure or two. Always ask players at the end of the session what are they planning to do next and then build it out. When building out the plotline, don't put the players on the WotC Railroad, let them pick and choose. If they do leave the main quest, if its a necromancer whose raising an army, well if they go off to slay giants, there will be consequences as the Necromancer gains more lands, no decision is completely free of consequences.
The prewritten module as a starter might be a good idea, to give you a ready-made adventure to run, allowing you to see HOW it rolls out, pace and so forth, and let you get a better feel for how you might roll out your own, original work. Having a story you want to present and have them go through is ok, but unless they and you are fine with a very linear tale, I think you might want to partly develop all the surrounding areas of YOUR story, with places and some people and some events/conflicts/situations pending, to allow the group to wander, even if only a bit, from the main arc.
I am guilty of railroading badly in my campaign so far, but in order to keep interest and immersion, my main arc is constantly shifting, to align better with what the group is looking to do. Once they complete the first major event in my main story arc, a lot more options will open, as the countdown timer will be set WAAY back for them to finish the main intended quest. Being flexible and not writing too far ahead is best, as it allows your story to adjust, based on things the players do that you don't expect (this WILL happen, so be ready) In the campaign I run, our last session turned into around 4 hours of me literally ad-libbing EVERYTHING, since they got deeply involved with folks they were supposed to meet, say hi, camp out and move on.
Expected interaction time: 10-15 minutes.
Actual interaction time: 4+ hours
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The best thing you can prepare is situations. Never write stories, write situations. An example of a situation: The party needs to reach the fort, but are cut off by a raging river. Following the river one way leads to a dangerous crossing with hungry gators, and the other way is a waterfall. There's a bridge, but the troll guarding the bridge demands you give him a sheep before he'll let you cross. The only sheep in the area are owned by a shepherd who doesn't want to sell them, but the shepherd's wife is sick. If she was cured, he'd give a sheep away as thanks. Problem is, the herbs needed to cure her are in the grove guarded by a horrible bear.
This situation is really open ended, right? All I've done is describe some problems. If you have your monster stats and a list of common DCs, you're ready to go. You can run a session just using what I've written here. And it can't be broken. No matter what the players do, they're not going to break your story because you didn't write a story. If they break the situation, good for them!
If you want, you can further develop it, but if I were you, my work in that area would go into descriptive language for the locations and creatures. The river is furious and freezing. The shepherd is shaky but his eyes shine fiercely with conviction. Etc. And maybe I would come up with a terrain feature or two for possible combat. Some wet slippery stones that might make someone fall, or a triggered snare trap hanging from a branch with a rotting carcass in it that might make someone sick. I don't need DCs, I have my chart. I literally just write what I just wrote.
Your overarching situation will very likely not matter for a long time, so you don't need to focus on it or make it clever. There's a dark lord, maybe. He's bringing his army of darkness to kill us all. Nobody thought dark lords were real, so we let the anti-dark-lord temples get overtaken by monsters. Go clear some out so we have a chance. Good enough! Name the dark lord so you don't have to explain what he is. He's Vorlock the Grim. He's Ultimos, the Forsaken One. You can figure out how he works later, when it actually matters. Is he a vampire? A lich? Who knows. Feel free to tell tales of his dreadful claws or his blazing crown or whatever sounds spooky in the moment.
Props to you too take on this challenge. Though. You want to bring your own story to life? Being a dm is not about your story. It's the player's story. That develops during each session. Things change with their encounters and backstories coming to life in the game.
The players make the story with interacting with the world.
I have a story I'd like to run. But I can't because I'd be railroading the players for my story instead of theirs.
Most immediate and important thing to do is read the basic rules if you haven’t.
After that, try something extremely basic: make a simple dungeon. Break it up into some areas, then further break those areas into rooms. Now add some monster. Maybe a trap or secret door to mix things up.
Practice with those monsters doing mock fights so you get a feel for how they work, and fight the players with them in a compelling and challenging way.
You are now ready to run D&D.