I'm a new player and I'm looking for tips on DMing, got any suggestions?
First of all, anyone who tells you there's only one way to do it is lying.
Next, you're going to make mistakes. You'll have sessions that don't go well.
Finally, you're a player too. If you aren't having fun, that's just as much a problem as if somebody else isn't.
Now I'm going to tell you the way to do it. :)
You need to communicate with your players. Get feedback, ask them what they like and don't like. Get them to participate in the process. Instead of having them create characters in isolation, then you bring them together for Reasons, get them together during character creation, and have them figure out why they're all working together.
As a new GM, you're probably going to find it easier to present the players with a prepared scenario, rather than trying to react to what they want to do. This is fine, as long as the players know it. If they think they have a choice as to whether to go to the haunted mansion, while you're trying to push them into it because that's all that's prepared, it's going to go badly. You can do this explicitly out-of-game, or in-game (they're all working for somebody is a common setup), but it needs to be known.
Start at level 1 or 2 and run a series of one shots. They can be connected just let the PCs know they are being hired to do a task.
Keep track of how much damage the PCs can do each round.
Dungeons are probably the easiest type of game to run. You don't have to worry about PCs going everywhere.
It's easy to Rp before going into the dungeon and inside have a captive or two on hand to break up the encounters.
Aim for making encounters too easy to moderate. Avoid challenging encounters at first. You want to know your players and their PCs capabilities before you go hard/deadly. Having too easy an encounter doesn't stop the game. Having a deadly encounter that ends with a tpk brings the game to a halt as everyone makes a new PC. So er on the side of being too easy instead of being too hard. Once you know the average damage your PCs are doing the better.
You can mostly cheat with high dice pools. If you have to roll 8d6 just use the average in the monster manual or use the average of 6d6 and add 2d6. Ex. 14 + 2d6 giving you 16-26. Less variance and generally the more dice you use the closer to average you are going to statistically end up with. Compare that to 8-48. Though most of the time you are going to find yourself in the 16-26 range either way you go.
Don't let players multiclass. It can easily increase the power level of the game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I'm a new player and I'm looking for tips on DMing, got any suggestions?
First of all, anyone who tells you there's only one way to do it is lying.
Next, you're going to make mistakes. You'll have sessions that don't go well.
Finally, you're a player too. If you aren't having fun, that's just as much a problem as if somebody else isn't.
Now I'm going to tell you the way to do it. :)
You need to communicate with your players. Get feedback, ask them what they like and don't like. Get them to participate in the process. Instead of having them create characters in isolation, then you bring them together for Reasons, get them together during character creation, and have them figure out why they're all working together.
As a new GM, you're probably going to find it easier to present the players with a prepared scenario, rather than trying to react to what they want to do. This is fine, as long as the players know it. If they think they have a choice as to whether to go to the haunted mansion, while you're trying to push them into it because that's all that's prepared, it's going to go badly. You can do this explicitly out-of-game, or in-game (they're all working for somebody is a common setup), but it needs to be known.
Start at level 1 or 2 and run a series of one shots. They can be connected just let the PCs know they are being hired to do a task.
Keep track of how much damage the PCs can do each round.
Dungeons are probably the easiest type of game to run. You don't have to worry about PCs going everywhere.
It's easy to Rp before going into the dungeon and inside have a captive or two on hand to break up the encounters.
Aim for making encounters too easy to moderate. Avoid challenging encounters at first. You want to know your players and their PCs capabilities before you go hard/deadly. Having too easy an encounter doesn't stop the game. Having a deadly encounter that ends with a tpk brings the game to a halt as everyone makes a new PC. So er on the side of being too easy instead of being too hard. Once you know the average damage your PCs are doing the better.
You can mostly cheat with high dice pools. If you have to roll 8d6 just use the average in the monster manual or use the average of 6d6 and add 2d6. Ex. 14 + 2d6 giving you 16-26. Less variance and generally the more dice you use the closer to average you are going to statistically end up with. Compare that to 8-48. Though most of the time you are going to find yourself in the 16-26 range either way you go.
Don't let players multiclass. It can easily increase the power level of the game.