So I'm relatively new to D&D - been listening to gameplay D&D podcast for the last two or three years now. Finally got some friends to agree to play with me and we've done a basic game playing the sunless citadel (i was a player). This time I'm DMing and I have plans to homebrew. Am I crazy?
I've put so much thought into my world, made a world map and map of the town you start in. Written my session one notes and I think I'm ready but have started wondering if I've over prepped leaving no room for my players to be creative or if I've missed something obvious. Advice please? Anyone willing to read through (I'll provide a link if requested) and give me their thoughts?
Calm down and accept that mistakes will be made. One of the comforting concepts of gaming with friends is that you have friends around you that will hoepfully be supportive of you. If this is their first time playing as well they might be a little more accepting of the occasional goof. Please bear in mind that while entertaining, podcasts and live play productions are just that - produced. These people are very good at what they do. They aren't a comparison to the average or beginner player, DM or even casual observer. I might suggest that tempering your expectations of how this will play out at the table would potentially lead to better acceptance of your game.
Being overprepared means that you've created things that the players will likely not encounter. At least not yet. There's time to explore, we just don't know which direction that the party is going to go in just yet. A good tactic might be to ask the players towards the end of each session which direction they plan to go at the start of the next session. This allows the DM the opportunity to focus on preparing what the players will see and not expend resources on things the players won't.
As long as your adventure has a call to action for the heroes, a conflict for the heroes to overcome and a way to resolve that conflict, you will have included everything that you need.
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“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
I'm two years into my homebrew campaign, which was also my first time DMing anything longer than a one-shot, so I can sympathize.
You will frequently and simultaneously be over- and under-prepared. Your players will ignore things you thought they'd look into and pursue things you haven't prepped for. As time progresses and you get to know your players better, you'll be able to anticipate their choices more as well as be more comfortable making things up on the fly. Do your best to have fun and make it fun. You'll do fine.
You will also get better with time. Better at making calls, better at improv, better at allowing your players to wreck things you painstakingly set up, better at responding to their amazing creativity and curveballs...so don't sweat it too much. Keep in mind that you'll be learning on the job. Take chances, make mistakes, and have fun with your friends.
Finally, yes, you're crazy. All DMs are. Either we start that way or our players' antics make us that way. Embrace the crazy. Have fun. ;-)
When the hobby started everyone was homebrewing, because the non-homebrew didn't exist. You'll make mistakes, everyone does, but it's certainly possible.
Thanks Theologyofbagels! Best response ever! I shall indeed embrace the crazy! I've tried to make sure I prepped so that if they miss little things I had prepared for flavor they don't matter to the main storyline but keep things interesting if they do investigate them. Hopefully I can think things up on the fly fast enough to keep up with any curveballs :'D Everything you've said has made me look forward to it more so I think I'm definitely starting off on the crazy train!
Sounds cool, but a word of warning: don't be more invested in your world than your players are. Nothing turns players off more than lore dumps and a ton of proper nouns to keep track of right off the bat-- many players turn to murder hoboism just to simplify matters in that case. Instead, you want to introduce your world in such a way that your players are allowed to discover stuff in it, and follow the threads that interest them. As much as they hate lore dumps, players LOVE discovering stuff, and when they get hooked, they get hooked.
The best way I've encountered to pull players in like this way is to start small in a localized area, populate it with several different plot hooks, one or two unique world features, and see what pulls at them.
As far as story goes, definitely be ready to scrap what you have prepared if the players' choices change things. Don't try to corrall the players back into the plot your originally planned out, instead, be ready to change the plan in reaction to them. That way they get the feeling that their actions/choices matter and have a tangible effect on the world. This again is a huge component for gaining player investment. Players who can dictate the story through their great deeds are players that are invested in the plot. Railroaded players are often just showing up for game night and half paying attention. Generally when coming up with plots, I look at it from the bad guy's perspective and plan about 3 moves ahead, figuring that by then the players will have gotten in the way and altered the grand scheme. That way you balance between having nothing prepared vs having the whole campaign prepared and railroading the players to make it work to fit your original vision.
As a homebrew dm myself the best advice i can give you is too take it slow. learn what you want to know. if you want to make cool monsters for the party to fight learn that slowly. don't jump all in. that's a good way to get in over your head and then lose structure. focus on one part of the world mainly. its ok to add flavors of other parts of the world for world building. but flesh it out slowly. if you dont it may come out sloppily and that's never good. also buy all the books if you can. you might not use them or play the campaigns but you can draw inspiration from them in unexpected ways
Hi! I am also a relatively new DM (started a year ago) and did exactly what you did.
I want to share my very personal experience:
I started by over-planning the world. Chances are your players might never see that much. I was tempted to send them on a lord-of-the-rings like trek across the continent, but they might feel more comfortable staying in one place. I ended up making a plot device that send them across the lands, just to justify my map, which at times made things a bit too hectic for them.
Really consider whether you want to present your players with a map. In my case, I found that while showing them the map gives an original "wow" factor, it invites meta-gaming. The DM drew a hut here in the forest? It must be important, let's check it out! Even though the characters have no way of knowing the hut is there and no reason to go there. A map can make the world feel small. The world feels much bigger if the environment is merely narrated by the DM and not read of a 2D map. Also note that in a medieval setting, characters most likely don't know all that much about the world. If it's anything like our 15th century (which I think roughly the technological level of the average DnD campaign) world maps were only starting to be somewhat accurate and you'd have to be a scholar to ever even get a glance at one.
I found that a map would stifle my own creativity. I constantly need to remind myself that a map is merely a compression of information. It only shows the most important bits. I often let my own map dictate what was there, and forgot that reality is much richer in detail! Small hamlets, tiny creeks, groups of trees too small to warrant a forest on a map, gentle hills, lone ruins... those are all things left out of a large overworld map and I feel I forcefully have to remind myself that they are there even when they are not on the map.
Drawing a map for a town is a LOT of work and not very rewarding. If you do it because you enjoy it, great. But the players may not actually care about the layout of the town. They care about a basic impression (is it rich? is it poor? is it clean or dirty? what kind of people live there?) and the places and services available (inn? temple? magic shop?). Not so much where to find them. I find a much more rewarding use of time is to think about what places my players might ask to visit, and then decide whether they can find these places and what they will encounter if they do. The nice thing about this form of preparation is also, that if they don't actually visit those places you prepared... you can recycle them in the next town without telling them ;-)
I think if I were to give one sentence of advice it would be: Be prepared to improvise!
When homebrewing there are two basic ways you can be over prepared. You can be over prepared in the story or over prepared with your setting.
The first occurs when you have scripted out everything that is going to happen from start to end of the campaign. This can be a problem, since it can be easy to get stuck on the rails and be unable to react to the chaos players inevitably bring.
Ideally you want to know who your primary antagonist is, what their motivations are, what their goals are, their situation at the campaign’s start (territory, allies, power, other resources, etc.), and a bit of a backstory providing their motives and already established plots.
Toss in some key objectives or events for the party to accomplish/be present for/completely ignore (front ended so you can make up new key objectives as the story progresses), and you have a solid outline for the plot that will allow you to adjust on the fly.
Being over prepared of setting is when you have over designed the world itself. Personally, I am of the camp that you can never over design the world - but my current homebrew bible is sitting at 82-pages and counting of single-spaced prose, so I admit I might be insane on this point. At a minimum, you want to know who the major actors are (be it people, nations, guilds, political movements, etc.) and enough about their relationships, goals, and motivations that you can reasonably and consistently determine what their reactions to certain situations are. You will want to take into account various factors like politics, geography, and your story when creating these entities so they both work with your story/your player’s backstories and feel like the entity organically grew from the world itself.
Provided you can keep track of all the information, you can go infinitely deep in fleshing out the world itself. Overall, your goal should be intimately understanding your world - that way you can judge how far the ripple effects from major events or the parties’ actions might travel.
I think this is extremely common, and for a good reason. While it's probably not the best way to dive in, the main factor that seems to limit people from becoming DMs is motivation. That excitement at being able to create and share your own world often makes the difference in someone's decision on whether to become a DM or not.
I'd encourage you to start however you like. Certainly there will be a lot of learning along the way, and there's good advice here to that end.
Oh, I forgot to mention it in my first post, but I would be happy to read your DM note if you want some guidance. Feel free to send me a PM if you would like to share and I will try to get to it when I have a few moments.
DerManic there are some amazing tips in there thank you! Where we are all first time players (and because i enjoyed myself!) I went with a map to help them build a picture of the world in their head. Kept it major cities but giving any hidden locations away so hopefully i dont regret the choice and it helps rather than hinders. I will be prepared to improvise!
This is the most true advice anyone can give. homebrew dm or not
Since this seemed to have struck a chord, I'd like to elaborate a little:
I don't just mean to mentally prepare yourself for the challenge of having to improvise (although I agree with that too) there are also preparations you can make to help improvisation. For example, it helps to have a couple of throwaway NPCs prepared. Next time your players want to strike a conversation with a random stranger, you can just grab one of your prepared NPCs. This is also very handy in case your players spend downtime with something like carousing or researching, where the whole point is to make connections. Or you could have some generic combat encounters for everyday murder-hobo situations in case your players decide to rob a store, cause trouble in the streets of a city, or similar. You might even have some small villages prepared without deciding where that village is going to be, in case your players wander off in an unexpected direction.
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Hi,
So I'm relatively new to D&D - been listening to gameplay D&D podcast for the last two or three years now. Finally got some friends to agree to play with me and we've done a basic game playing the sunless citadel (i was a player). This time I'm DMing and I have plans to homebrew. Am I crazy?
I've put so much thought into my world, made a world map and map of the town you start in. Written my session one notes and I think I'm ready but have started wondering if I've over prepped leaving no room for my players to be creative or if I've missed something obvious. Advice please? Anyone willing to read through (I'll provide a link if requested) and give me their thoughts?
Calm down and accept that mistakes will be made. One of the comforting concepts of gaming with friends is that you have friends around you that will hoepfully be supportive of you. If this is their first time playing as well they might be a little more accepting of the occasional goof. Please bear in mind that while entertaining, podcasts and live play productions are just that - produced. These people are very good at what they do. They aren't a comparison to the average or beginner player, DM or even casual observer. I might suggest that tempering your expectations of how this will play out at the table would potentially lead to better acceptance of your game.
Being overprepared means that you've created things that the players will likely not encounter. At least not yet. There's time to explore, we just don't know which direction that the party is going to go in just yet. A good tactic might be to ask the players towards the end of each session which direction they plan to go at the start of the next session. This allows the DM the opportunity to focus on preparing what the players will see and not expend resources on things the players won't.
As long as your adventure has a call to action for the heroes, a conflict for the heroes to overcome and a way to resolve that conflict, you will have included everything that you need.
“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
I'm two years into my homebrew campaign, which was also my first time DMing anything longer than a one-shot, so I can sympathize.
You will frequently and simultaneously be over- and under-prepared. Your players will ignore things you thought they'd look into and pursue things you haven't prepped for. As time progresses and you get to know your players better, you'll be able to anticipate their choices more as well as be more comfortable making things up on the fly. Do your best to have fun and make it fun. You'll do fine.
You will also get better with time. Better at making calls, better at improv, better at allowing your players to wreck things you painstakingly set up, better at responding to their amazing creativity and curveballs...so don't sweat it too much. Keep in mind that you'll be learning on the job. Take chances, make mistakes, and have fun with your friends.
Finally, yes, you're crazy. All DMs are. Either we start that way or our players' antics make us that way. Embrace the crazy. Have fun. ;-)
When the hobby started everyone was homebrewing, because the non-homebrew didn't exist. You'll make mistakes, everyone does, but it's certainly possible.
Thanks Theologyofbagels! Best response ever! I shall indeed embrace the crazy! I've tried to make sure I prepped so that if they miss little things I had prepared for flavor they don't matter to the main storyline but keep things interesting if they do investigate them. Hopefully I can think things up on the fly fast enough to keep up with any curveballs :'D Everything you've said has made me look forward to it more so I think I'm definitely starting off on the crazy train!
Sounds cool, but a word of warning: don't be more invested in your world than your players are. Nothing turns players off more than lore dumps and a ton of proper nouns to keep track of right off the bat-- many players turn to murder hoboism just to simplify matters in that case. Instead, you want to introduce your world in such a way that your players are allowed to discover stuff in it, and follow the threads that interest them. As much as they hate lore dumps, players LOVE discovering stuff, and when they get hooked, they get hooked.
The best way I've encountered to pull players in like this way is to start small in a localized area, populate it with several different plot hooks, one or two unique world features, and see what pulls at them.
As far as story goes, definitely be ready to scrap what you have prepared if the players' choices change things. Don't try to corrall the players back into the plot your originally planned out, instead, be ready to change the plan in reaction to them. That way they get the feeling that their actions/choices matter and have a tangible effect on the world. This again is a huge component for gaining player investment. Players who can dictate the story through their great deeds are players that are invested in the plot. Railroaded players are often just showing up for game night and half paying attention. Generally when coming up with plots, I look at it from the bad guy's perspective and plan about 3 moves ahead, figuring that by then the players will have gotten in the way and altered the grand scheme. That way you balance between having nothing prepared vs having the whole campaign prepared and railroading the players to make it work to fit your original vision.
Just a few bits of advice!
As a homebrew dm myself the best advice i can give you is too take it slow. learn what you want to know. if you want to make cool monsters for the party to fight learn that slowly. don't jump all in. that's a good way to get in over your head and then lose structure. focus on one part of the world mainly. its ok to add flavors of other parts of the world for world building. but flesh it out slowly. if you dont it may come out sloppily and that's never good. also buy all the books if you can. you might not use them or play the campaigns but you can draw inspiration from them in unexpected ways
Hi! I am also a relatively new DM (started a year ago) and did exactly what you did.
I want to share my very personal experience:
I think if I were to give one sentence of advice it would be: Be prepared to improvise!
When homebrewing there are two basic ways you can be over prepared. You can be over prepared in the story or over prepared with your setting.
The first occurs when you have scripted out everything that is going to happen from start to end of the campaign. This can be a problem, since it can be easy to get stuck on the rails and be unable to react to the chaos players inevitably bring.
Ideally you want to know who your primary antagonist is, what their motivations are, what their goals are, their situation at the campaign’s start (territory, allies, power, other resources, etc.), and a bit of a backstory providing their motives and already established plots.
Toss in some key objectives or events for the party to accomplish/be present for/completely ignore (front ended so you can make up new key objectives as the story progresses), and you have a solid outline for the plot that will allow you to adjust on the fly.
Being over prepared of setting is when you have over designed the world itself. Personally, I am of the camp that you can never over design the world - but my current homebrew bible is sitting at 82-pages and counting of single-spaced prose, so I admit I might be insane on this point. At a minimum, you want to know who the major actors are (be it people, nations, guilds, political movements, etc.) and enough about their relationships, goals, and motivations that you can reasonably and consistently determine what their reactions to certain situations are. You will want to take into account various factors like politics, geography, and your story when creating these entities so they both work with your story/your player’s backstories and feel like the entity organically grew from the world itself.
Provided you can keep track of all the information, you can go infinitely deep in fleshing out the world itself. Overall, your goal should be intimately understanding your world - that way you can judge how far the ripple effects from major events or the parties’ actions might travel.
This is the most true advice anyone can give. homebrew dm or not
I think this is extremely common, and for a good reason. While it's probably not the best way to dive in, the main factor that seems to limit people from becoming DMs is motivation. That excitement at being able to create and share your own world often makes the difference in someone's decision on whether to become a DM or not.
I'd encourage you to start however you like. Certainly there will be a lot of learning along the way, and there's good advice here to that end.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Oh, I forgot to mention it in my first post, but I would be happy to read your DM note if you want some guidance. Feel free to send me a PM if you would like to share and I will try to get to it when I have a few moments.
DerManic there are some amazing tips in there thank you! Where we are all first time players (and because i enjoyed myself!) I went with a map to help them build a picture of the world in their head. Kept it major cities but giving any hidden locations away so hopefully i dont regret the choice and it helps rather than hinders. I will be prepared to improvise!
Since this seemed to have struck a chord, I'd like to elaborate a little:
I don't just mean to mentally prepare yourself for the challenge of having to improvise (although I agree with that too) there are also preparations you can make to help improvisation. For example, it helps to have a couple of throwaway NPCs prepared. Next time your players want to strike a conversation with a random stranger, you can just grab one of your prepared NPCs. This is also very handy in case your players spend downtime with something like carousing or researching, where the whole point is to make connections. Or you could have some generic combat encounters for everyday murder-hobo situations in case your players decide to rob a store, cause trouble in the streets of a city, or similar. You might even have some small villages prepared without deciding where that village is going to be, in case your players wander off in an unexpected direction.