Pardon my french. But It's the only way I know how to express these feelings.
Anyway. I decided, after a LONG... LONG time debating, to finally cut the cord and try my hand at being a DM. But frankly, I've no idea how that'll go.
Is there tips or hints that the more experienced guys/gals among you can provide me to ease the knot in my stomach?
Start with a smaller, prebuilt module or one shot. You can find many of these for free on the DMs Guild. These adventures will help wet your feet with running a story, developing some plot, orchestrating combat, etc. You will likely observe "behind the scenes" notes and understand simple vs complex preparations that may lie in wait for players.
Even without the opportunity to run these games, read through a few adventures to get a feel. I believe it would be quite helpful.
What I was thinking of doing was make like a custom introduction for myself, then trickle over into Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Depending on how succesful I make it out to be, of course.
But I'll definitely have a look through the various adventures.
Thanks for the links as well! I'll have a read/look =D
The first rule is to remember to have fun. It's a shared-collaborative experience.
You set up the world and populate it, and then the players come around and muck everything up :) BUT you don't have to set it all up at once. Start small, with a simple town and a haunted graveyard/tower then slowly grow out from there. You will get a sense of what both you and your players like. If you have access to it, the beginning set has "The lost mine of Phandelver" in it, and that's a great intro module (for levels 1-5). It shows a lot about basic dm'ing and plot hooks. You can easily launch from there to hoard of the dragon queen or any other module/homebrew.
Start small, grow and have fun :)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
I got Hoard and Lost mine at the same time, and since I've not properly written out anything I can always switch. I'll have a read through the Lost Mine book and see what it says. Thanks for the tip =)
You're welcome. If you use the "lost mine" in this way, you can skip ahead some in Hoard. There are easy tie ins to dragon cultists etc in Lost Mine.
Also, in terms of writing things out. Everyone has a different style. I outline the basic beats of a few stories without going into great detail as players can be quite unpredictable.
That way I have a bit of an adventure flow that I can move around depending on what the players do, it also helps me track progress towards the parts of the story I want to make sure the players become aware of.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
You will make mistakes. That's OK. Every DM makes mistakes. As the game is fun mistakes are ok.
Don't be afraid to make a ruling on the spot so the game can move on and sort out the proper rule later. Related to this, if a rules mistake is made and things have not moved beyond it much you can rewind the scene and do it over with the proper rule. If tings have progressed several scenes on apologize for getting the rule wrong and note that you will apply the correct rule in the future.
If you can't decide something roll dice for it. I have a d6 marked with "Very Unlikely" to "Almost Certain" I use it when I can't decide how likely or tough something should be.
Remember to relax and have fun. A fun game is the most important thing.
Congrats on taking the DM plunge! I hope you have tons of fun!
I agree that Lost Mines is an excellent adventure to use as your first time DMing if you want to run a premade module.
Don't be afraid to not know the answer. Look stuff up, ask questions of your players, make stuff up as you go....just try your best to do what sounds fun and roll with it!
One of my biggest recommendations to any new DM is to plan a "session zero" with your players.
It's about making sure you all feel comfortable talking about the game, the rules and how it's going.
Set the frame for the type of campaign you're planning. E.g. a mix of outdoors and dungeon, probably low on the city-based. This helps characters make informed decisions on what characters they would have fun with and what would be useful.
As a new DM, be open and ask the players to create characters that are inclined to work together as a team - this will prevent a LOT of problems further on.
Talk about backgrounds - see if the players want to roleplay their characters meeting each other and discovering each other's backgrounds, or whether they would rather start off all (or mostly) knowing each other to start with. Some of them might decide their characters are related for example - this provides much stronger ties to start with.
I learned by watching a few tutorial videos on youtube, which were great at teaching me how the game works and how to DM. Then I went and watched a couple of games where people just went and played the game themselves. As a spectator, you can't see what resources the DM has, but you can certainly tell how they are throwing encounters at the players, how they are narrating the adventure and how they handle rules, which ones they enforce and which ones they are more lax about. All that will help with getting a hang of what the flow of a session is like.
My first time DM'ing, I went with a homebrew campaign. The Dungeon Master's Guide will give you some pointers on creating an adventure (give each player character a hook based on their background to get them invested in the story) and how to proceed about it. I didn't have most of the world planned (which is alright), just a few first encounters, which my players didn't get to do because they decided to do things I didn't foresee. So planning for things your players will do when they don't follow your story is a good idea, but also leaving a clear crumb trail for them to follow helps to ensure you won't be surprised that often.
Other than that, the most important thing is to have fun; maybe your players won't advance much of the story or they'll do unpredictable things, but if everybody enjoyed themselves and are willing to come back for another session, then you're definitely doing something right :)
Is this a group with friends? Just make sure everyone knows that you're trying this out for the first time, and then if you're not a jerk about anything, then they won't have a reason to be jerks about it, and you can all figure it out as you go :)
Being transparent about that as a player/DM is important. For example, I as a player recently had a plan to do some scouting, and I was going to use my Warlock super-familiar--but I was somewhat self-limiting what I was intending to do with the familiar. One of the other players asked me why I wasn't just going to have the familiar do X, Y, and then Z, and also these other things that the familiar could do, and I just said "well, because frankly that would just be me and the DM, and this other way involves the rest of the party". :D
So as the DM, feel free to be that transparent about things. particularly early on. "With you unconscious on the ground, the ogre does not stop to bash your head in, because I don't want you to die right now, and instead he moves across the room to..." You get to do things like that, again particularly early on, because you're still figuring out challenge ratings and how to balance 'difficult vs lethal', and so you just say to your players "So...that pit trap was not planned to kill you all. Aaaaaaaand so you wake up in a cage, surrounded by grinning orcs. Apparently they saved you from the pit, healed you up, and are planning on sacrificing you to their gods once you're healthy. What are you doing?"
It's similar to saying "I'm not sure exactly what happens when someone is poisoned", and pausing to look it up or make a quick ruling by fiat and look it up later.
Don't pretend like you know everything, and people won't get upset when you don't :) Good luck.
Welcome to this side of the GM' screen! We have cookies.
Well, we should have cookies. Once we let everyone at the table know that the number of cookies is inversely proportional to the number of beholders...
First piece of advice: Relax. No matter how bad you think you did, people will have fun at the table.
Second piece of advice: Don't stress about the rules. Tell the players, "There's a good chance I'll get rules wrong. If I do, we aren't going to stop - we'll just continue playing. At the end of the night we'll review rules and make changes, but once the game is running, let's keep it running instead of stopping to read books."
Third piece of advice: Think about tone. Do you want the game to be serious (Conan the Barbarian), semi-serious (Conan the Destroyer), funny (Krod Mandoon or Death Stalker), tragic (Camelot), or what? You will be the one setting the tone of the game, so work it out beforehand. Write it on the back of the GM screen and glance at it everytime you describe something or have an NPC talk. Your players won't care about rules and combats, but they will notice when you get the tone consistent, and they will adjust their behaviour to match it.
And welcome again. Many of us (including me) think this side of the screen is more fun.
1. Don't stress with having EVERYTHING planned out. Make the big stuff (encounters, NPCs etc) and then improvise the rest.
2. To start out stick with basics, try and keep away from Homebrew for both you and your players until your comfortable enough running the game.
3. Don't be afraid to change things, if you play in a normal group then start to DM don't worry about doing things exactly how your other DM does it. It's your game do what you want
4. Just relax and have fun, it's a game for you just as much as it is for your players. Don't worry too much about making mistakes it'll happen sooner or later.
5. Talk to your players, get ideas of what they'd like to do game wise and get feedback from them after each session
IN all seriousness, reason why I wanted to be on this side was because I wanted to tell stories for as long as I can remember. Plus, being in a god damn writers block with my own book, might as well try my hand at it. I've plenty of experience with being a player, just not DnD. Done a large amount of WoD, small amount of Pathfinder (did not really enjoy it, but that was due to my DM and his wife). Other than that, pretty much nil.
Pardon my french. But It's the only way I know how to express these feelings.
Anyway. I decided, after a LONG... LONG time debating, to finally cut the cord and try my hand at being a DM. But frankly, I've no idea how that'll go.
Is there tips or hints that the more experienced guys/gals among you can provide me to ease the knot in my stomach?
Thanks in advance.
Corb
Start with a smaller, prebuilt module or one shot. You can find many of these for free on the DMs Guild. These adventures will help wet your feet with running a story, developing some plot, orchestrating combat, etc. You will likely observe "behind the scenes" notes and understand simple vs complex preparations that may lie in wait for players.
Even without the opportunity to run these games, read through a few adventures to get a feel. I believe it would be quite helpful.
You may also want to view some of the video posts created here on D&D Beyond: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts
A few of these include:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/414-dungeon-mastering-tips-from-the-4th-edition
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/333-mark-hulmes-on-playing-d-d-and-dungeon-mastering
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/194-a-new-dms-guide-for-building-combat-encounters
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/160-improvisation-in-d-d-for-new-dungeon-masters
What I was thinking of doing was make like a custom introduction for myself, then trickle over into Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Depending on how succesful I make it out to be, of course.
But I'll definitely have a look through the various adventures.
Thanks for the links as well! I'll have a read/look =D
The first rule is to remember to have fun. It's a shared-collaborative experience.
You set up the world and populate it, and then the players come around and muck everything up :) BUT you don't have to set it all up at once. Start small, with a simple town and a haunted graveyard/tower then slowly grow out from there. You will get a sense of what both you and your players like. If you have access to it, the beginning set has "The lost mine of Phandelver" in it, and that's a great intro module (for levels 1-5). It shows a lot about basic dm'ing and plot hooks. You can easily launch from there to hoard of the dragon queen or any other module/homebrew.
Start small, grow and have fun :)
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
I got Hoard and Lost mine at the same time, and since I've not properly written out anything I can always switch. I'll have a read through the Lost Mine book and see what it says. Thanks for the tip =)
You're welcome. If you use the "lost mine" in this way, you can skip ahead some in Hoard. There are easy tie ins to dragon cultists etc in Lost Mine.
Also, in terms of writing things out. Everyone has a different style. I outline the basic beats of a few stories without going into great detail as players can be quite unpredictable.
That way I have a bit of an adventure flow that I can move around depending on what the players do, it also helps me track progress towards the parts of the story I want to make sure the players become aware of.
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Your game doesn't have to be perfect. You will forget things. You will do some things "wrong". That's OK. Having fun is your goal =)
Sip a little pepto bismol before your game and jump in.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
You will make mistakes. That's OK. Every DM makes mistakes. As the game is fun mistakes are ok.
Don't be afraid to make a ruling on the spot so the game can move on and sort out the proper rule later. Related to this, if a rules mistake is made and things have not moved beyond it much you can rewind the scene and do it over with the proper rule. If tings have progressed several scenes on apologize for getting the rule wrong and note that you will apply the correct rule in the future.
If you can't decide something roll dice for it. I have a d6 marked with "Very Unlikely" to "Almost Certain" I use it when I can't decide how likely or tough something should be.
Remember to relax and have fun. A fun game is the most important thing.
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InsiderCongrats on taking the DM plunge! I hope you have tons of fun!
I agree that Lost Mines is an excellent adventure to use as your first time DMing if you want to run a premade module.
Don't be afraid to not know the answer. Look stuff up, ask questions of your players, make stuff up as you go....just try your best to do what sounds fun and roll with it!
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
Thank you for the advice thread! Im nervous myself- taking the plunge next week!
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D&D Beyond FoundersOne of my biggest recommendations to any new DM is to plan a "session zero" with your players.
It's about making sure you all feel comfortable talking about the game, the rules and how it's going.
Set the frame for the type of campaign you're planning. E.g. a mix of outdoors and dungeon, probably low on the city-based. This helps characters make informed decisions on what characters they would have fun with and what would be useful.
As a new DM, be open and ask the players to create characters that are inclined to work together as a team - this will prevent a LOT of problems further on.
Talk about backgrounds - see if the players want to roleplay their characters meeting each other and discovering each other's backgrounds, or whether they would rather start off all (or mostly) knowing each other to start with. Some of them might decide their characters are related for example - this provides much stronger ties to start with.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
I learned by watching a few tutorial videos on youtube, which were great at teaching me how the game works and how to DM. Then I went and watched a couple of games where people just went and played the game themselves. As a spectator, you can't see what resources the DM has, but you can certainly tell how they are throwing encounters at the players, how they are narrating the adventure and how they handle rules, which ones they enforce and which ones they are more lax about. All that will help with getting a hang of what the flow of a session is like.
My first time DM'ing, I went with a homebrew campaign. The Dungeon Master's Guide will give you some pointers on creating an adventure (give each player character a hook based on their background to get them invested in the story) and how to proceed about it. I didn't have most of the world planned (which is alright), just a few first encounters, which my players didn't get to do because they decided to do things I didn't foresee. So planning for things your players will do when they don't follow your story is a good idea, but also leaving a clear crumb trail for them to follow helps to ensure you won't be surprised that often.
This is the video series that taught me the ins and outs of the game; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJmFJXf3BXjwaimrJXwnQuGRJWhc9N2L2
And this is the intro-tutorial campaign I watched a group of people playing; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7atuZxmT955yt0W4QP5VD4TwLQvV3EiM
Other than that, the most important thing is to have fun; maybe your players won't advance much of the story or they'll do unpredictable things, but if everybody enjoyed themselves and are willing to come back for another session, then you're definitely doing something right :)
Is this a group with friends? Just make sure everyone knows that you're trying this out for the first time, and then if you're not a jerk about anything, then they won't have a reason to be jerks about it, and you can all figure it out as you go :)
Being transparent about that as a player/DM is important. For example, I as a player recently had a plan to do some scouting, and I was going to use my Warlock super-familiar--but I was somewhat self-limiting what I was intending to do with the familiar. One of the other players asked me why I wasn't just going to have the familiar do X, Y, and then Z, and also these other things that the familiar could do, and I just said "well, because frankly that would just be me and the DM, and this other way involves the rest of the party". :D
So as the DM, feel free to be that transparent about things. particularly early on. "With you unconscious on the ground, the ogre does not stop to bash your head in, because I don't want you to die right now, and instead he moves across the room to..." You get to do things like that, again particularly early on, because you're still figuring out challenge ratings and how to balance 'difficult vs lethal', and so you just say to your players "So...that pit trap was not planned to kill you all. Aaaaaaaand so you wake up in a cage, surrounded by grinning orcs. Apparently they saved you from the pit, healed you up, and are planning on sacrificing you to their gods once you're healthy. What are you doing?"
It's similar to saying "I'm not sure exactly what happens when someone is poisoned", and pausing to look it up or make a quick ruling by fiat and look it up later.
Don't pretend like you know everything, and people won't get upset when you don't :) Good luck.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
Welcome to this side of the GM' screen! We have cookies.
Well, we should have cookies. Once we let everyone at the table know that the number of cookies is inversely proportional to the number of beholders...
First piece of advice: Relax. No matter how bad you think you did, people will have fun at the table.
Second piece of advice: Don't stress about the rules. Tell the players, "There's a good chance I'll get rules wrong. If I do, we aren't going to stop - we'll just continue playing. At the end of the night we'll review rules and make changes, but once the game is running, let's keep it running instead of stopping to read books."
Third piece of advice: Think about tone. Do you want the game to be serious (Conan the Barbarian), semi-serious (Conan the Destroyer), funny (Krod Mandoon or Death Stalker), tragic (Camelot), or what? You will be the one setting the tone of the game, so work it out beforehand. Write it on the back of the GM screen and glance at it everytime you describe something or have an NPC talk. Your players won't care about rules and combats, but they will notice when you get the tone consistent, and they will adjust their behaviour to match it.
And welcome again. Many of us (including me) think this side of the screen is more fun.
1. Don't stress with having EVERYTHING planned out. Make the big stuff (encounters, NPCs etc) and then improvise the rest.
2. To start out stick with basics, try and keep away from Homebrew for both you and your players until your comfortable enough running the game.
3. Don't be afraid to change things, if you play in a normal group then start to DM don't worry about doing things exactly how your other DM does it. It's your game do what you want
4. Just relax and have fun, it's a game for you just as much as it is for your players. Don't worry too much about making mistakes it'll happen sooner or later.
5. Talk to your players, get ideas of what they'd like to do game wise and get feedback from them after each session
Cookies?!?!?! COOKIES?!?!?!
YAS QUEEN!
IN all seriousness, reason why I wanted to be on this side was because I wanted to tell stories for as long as I can remember. Plus, being in a god damn writers block with my own book, might as well try my hand at it. I've plenty of experience with being a player, just not DnD. Done a large amount of WoD, small amount of Pathfinder (did not really enjoy it, but that was due to my DM and his wife). Other than that, pretty much nil.
Guys, thank you so much for your words and advice. I'll let you all know how it goes.
Planning to do my Session 0's with the group soon, and I got my dice and DM screen today. Looking forward!