I'll be running my first ever session as a DM on Sunday. I've only played a handful of sessions as a PC and consumed a lot of actual play content (Dimension20, NADDPOD, Dungeons and Daddies, a smidge of Critical Role), plus I have quite a bit of professional improv and acting training.
I am, I think understandably, most concerned about the mechanics of the game. I know, I know, "make a ruling and move on", but I would like to be as fair and consistent as possible. Mistakes and bad calls happen, but I would like to minimize them for myself and my players.
That said, there are about a billion different printables and lists and resources for DM's, which is GREAT! I just...don't quite know where to start? When you were at the beginning of your DM journey, what did you find the most helpful/important as far as keeping track of everything and having handy reference for more complicated rules? I'm of course planning to expand and tweak as the campaign goes on, but having a solid base of things behind my DM screen to try out and edit as needed would be ideal.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions, I can't wait to play!
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"Are you my freaking dad?!?" ~Gorgug Thistlespring
Honestly, reading through the DMG and PHB is good prep. Everyone has their own style, but most of the time it boils down to getting to the point where you're comfortable enough with your knowledge of the rules that you can improvise the rest. Maybe use sticky notes to mark important parts of the DMG & PHB for future reference (like the prices of gear, the stats of weapons/armor, etc).
I highly suggest looking up the lore on the monsters you use, because that extra flavor will breathe a lot of life into your game. Introducing something like Tucker's Kobolds to a campaign will be much more impactful than running the kobolds the same way you'd run goblins.
Having a first game be a little on rails is not a bad thing. Just try to leave room for some deviation. For instance, if you start the game with them having already accepted a job to escort a wagon to the next town, and you had every player pick something big that their characters needed to save up money for that was highly important to them, then your party should follow the path you laid out, and not randomly decide to cross the countryside to go to have a beach-episode on a random coast you didn't prepare. This setup greatly reduces how much you have to prepare, but try to account for different approaches the party might take. (ex: Maybe they'll ford the stream and be attacked by Quippers, or maybe they'll travel hours to the next crossing which they'll find is currently occupied by bandits that took out this bridge to force travel through their location. The players still get a combat encounter either way, but their decisions determined which encounter they got.
My first game I ran started with the player characters waking up in an ancient crypt from a lost civilization, and having to utilize their skills to find a way out, navigating collapsing tunnels, underground rivers, giant rodents/bugs, and rust monsters. As I got more comfortable, I opened up the rest of the world to the players, and over the next three-ish years of the campaign, they went from basic villagers, to the defeaters of dragons, fiends, and an arch-lich.
For me the biggest thing early on was having notes for myself. An outline of what I thought the session was likely to cover, and then a couple of scenarios that could be easily adapted if the players made choices that I wasn't expecting. A handful of NPC names with a couple of personality traits each in case I needed to wing it while still trying to manage other parts of on-the-fly situations, that kind of thing. I think if you've played the game some and watched some actual play, with your improv experience you'll do a great job. Good luck and have fun!
Ensure that you fully understand the core rules. Read up on:
Combat, all of it
The monsters you're running
Social interaction ability checks
If you have a good knowledge of those, then everything else can be improvised when needed.
Call up a web page or have a handout (the standard DM screen is good for this) that has Conditions listed on them. That's the only sheet of notes you're likely to need.
Don't run something that's too complicated.
Start the characters at level 1. Level 1 is a training tool for you as well as the players because it keeps things simple.
Run a session zero, not the first adventure. This sounds quite boring, but it's essential for you to be able to run the best campaign that you can run. There are countless campaigns that could have been saved a huge amount of grief before starting if a session zero had been run, because it's your best bet in ensuring that everyone is trying to play the same game. If you're too eager to play to run one, then send the players a set of Session Zero instructions so that they can read through them.
Talk to your players about their characters before you begin and ensure the following:
Nobody is intending to play an Evil alignment character (veteran DMs can handle this, but that's because they've seen it handled badly before and know how to deal with it. Evil characters will derail your game if not treated right). Evil characters are solo players; they won't work well with the party and D&D is a cooperative game.
Every character has become an adventurer because either money, powerknowledge, fame or a desire to do good in the world motivates them. If they do not have any of these motivations then they have no business adventuring, will not be interested in your story, and will wander around doing pointless things.
If everyone at the table is having fun, even if you’re not strictly following the rules, you did it right.
It’s okay to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. It turns out that’s the best way to learn how to avoid that mistake again in future. Making mistakes is not a failing, not learning from them is.
If something comes up at the table, and you cannot find the rule for it in about a minute, just make a decision, let everyone know that’s what you are doing, and that you will look up an official answer before the next session.
Reread chapters 7, 9, and 10 of the PHB, because the vast majority of all the rules that get used just about every session are in those three chapters.
If you are homebrewing a campaign outline the story beats, maps, and encounters that COULD be covered in the session, don't prepare from a linear perspective as there is no true predicting what your players may do.
If you are using a published adventure, say a WotC campaign or something from DMSGuild.com then spends an hour at most going over the materials provided jot some notes down but have a good enough understanding with what's written so not every five minute there is a "pause in the action" as you read up on what happens next.
You'll spend more time improving in a game so keep that in mind that not everything is going to go according to plan. This is a skill you'll develop and hone as you have more sessions.
Don't let the game discourage you. If you walk away thinking you did a poor job, more likely than not you are taking it too hard on yourself, because I'm sure the players had a good time. If you think you messed up make a note of it and go research it or do what you've already have done ask questions here. There is a lot of great people who have helped me along the way and I ask really DUMB questions. I've just celebrated my 101 sessions (To all the others reading this who know me; I know shocking.) and I wouldn't have accomplished that without the help of the people here. So leverage the forums as an important resource.
Finally, one laugh is all it takes to make a lasting memory at the table.
You are going to be fine. You are going to be great. Now go roll some dice.
I'll second a lot of the advice given so far. Here are a few more things.
You don't have to understand all of the classes and spells, just be broadly familiar with the ones your characters are.
Have the players read the spells to you if you aren't familiar with them, that way you can both learn together, and it may give you time to jot a few extra notes down.
Have a couple of lists of names for Random NPCs. Being able to give an NPC a name makes the world more immersive.
Don't be afraid to let your players help create the world with you. When a character rolls a nat 20 on certain skills -- let them inject or create something in the world. Ie. A player asks about the history of an old forest and rolls a nat 20 -- have them tell you a few details of the forest's history.
Finally, if you are not using DnD beyond combat tracker and are at an actual table -- put initiative counters for the party/opponents on top of your gm screen so everyone knows whose turn it is and who is coming up next.
You're at the start of a great journey! enjoy it!
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'll second a lot of the advice given so far. Here are a few more things.
You don't have to understand all of the classes and spells, just be broadly familiar with the ones your characters are.
Have the players read the spells to you if you aren't familiar with them, that way you can both learn together, and it may give you time to jot a few extra notes down.
Have a couple of lists of names for Random NPCs. Being able to give an NPC a name makes the world more immersive.
Don't be afraid to let your players help create the world with you. When a character rolls a nat 20 on certain skills -- let them inject or create something in the world. Ie. A player asks about the history of an old forest and rolls a nat 20 -- have them tell you a few details of the forest's history.
Finally, if you are not using DnD beyond combat tracker and are at an actual table -- put initiative counters for the party/opponents on top of your gm screen so everyone knows whose turn it is and who is coming up next.
You're at the start of a great journey! enjoy it!
This is a really good one, and here is a great source for names (Fantasy Name Generators) I use the Game of Thrones: Westeros naming engine for my NPC, unique but pronounceable.
It's not 100% accurate (i.e., Turin's blade, Gurthang, meaning "Iron Death" being a compound word doesn't translate that way, but as "Ang gurth" in the translator) but you can create your own compounded names. It even has an Orcish translator.
If you think of yourself as a "world builder" two caveats 1.) accept that your PCs are likely never going to see all your hard work and 2.) they're there to ultimately have an impact on that world, in a lot of ways it's their world too, and they're definitely not there to play tourist while the DM lectures them on all the intricacies through NPC exposition (no matter how many erudite voices you know.
Start small. Almost every DM "starting a new world," shows up in DMs Only and Story and Lore having problems with how many continents their world has, or whether they should set a key establishment of power dynamics in the world 2000 or 10000 years back ... don't get me wrong WorldAnvil is awesome, but the DMG has really really good and all too often ignored advice on world building. Start with a simple starting point like a town, with some low level adventuring things to do within it or its environs, and once the players get a few encounters under their belt, and you get to know those characters and what makes them really thrive, then build out.
STEAL. The central conflict between Bahamat and Tiamat in my game is basically Apollo and Marsyas in terms of the primal scene raw wounding that dealt at creation (the Flail of Tiamat in Fizban's has a much darker story to it), and I'd say there's probably a Cain and Abel aspect to it too. I don't think the players know that. My favorite demon lord is basically a Jesse Ventura impression, most of my players don't know who Jesse Ventura is.
Don't watch too many videos. Colville is great and encylopedic, but honestly Seth Skorkowsky is more digestible with a lot of the same points. Anycase, you don't need hours of YouTube. Heck, back in the last 1st golden age of gaming there was Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering. It's a short work, 32 comic book sized pages, and get you into and out of what being a GM is all about that some of the YouTube talking heads spend hours on the same points. Sly Flourish's books are a good follow up to Robin's Laws and are more D&D specific.
Teacher trick. Teachers don't actually know everything, but ever notice how the good ones rarely deviate from sounding authoritative (which is very different from authoritarian, know the difference)? Learn that trick.
Don't worry about making mistakes. They happen. Good players, or well treated players are forgiving of a DM who goes "oops, my foul." If you made a call that adversely affected the party, offer a retcon opportunity or a restoration ex machina moment. If you made a bad call that got the player's ahead, admit your error, and just explain how going forward that sort of situation will be handled differently and explain the new way. Don't bother with homebrewing and house rules so much at first, it's like hot rodding without really knowing how an engine works. Once you're comfortable with the game though, feel free to try new things, but whenever there's something novel, debrief with the table. The rules are not all about you so you should check in to see how your running of the game is affecting the players' experience of the game. I suppose this suggestion doesn't just apply to to house rules, but new players first encounters with combat, and hitherto unencountered game features. Look for the players who admit to feeling "lost" and figure out how to get you all on the same page of the rules.
Related to don't overdo it, remember you're supposed to have fun too. Burn out happens. If the game is becoming more of a chore or a burden, figure out what the stress points are. Feel free to call off a session's planned campaign (in advance) and show up with one of the many one pager TTRPGs out there so everyone can loosen up a little. "A Kindness of Ravens" is one of my faves.
I'm about to start DMing again after not doing it at all since about 1995. Much has changed, but the core of the game is still what I remember.
I'll be running an updated version of my old homebrewed 1E world. Players will meet in jail, get rescued, then dumped outside a town where they can find lodging, supplies, and employment or rumors of adventure. They can take one of the obvious hooks, or they can just go exploring--I make my own random encounter charts that include some encounters related to story arcs, some non-combat encounters,, and a small chance of something special, possibly a god in disguise or other powerful entity that could become important later....
I like to throw out a lot of clues, and let the party do what they will. Mystery is good. Let the party wonder about stuff, while I just sorta smile, maybe roll some dice behind the screen, throw in a few facials, scribble a quick note, look directly at a player, write a note, etc.
One of my players has agreed to help me with the 5E mechanics on the down low....
The important thing is to understand the things you intend to use. If you have a creature who can leave someone paralyzed and incapacitated, look up exactly what those conditions mean. If you're running a monster which can cast firebolt innately, then look up how that spell works.
Make it clear to the players that they are expected to know what their spells do. As a DM I will ask a player "Ok, what does that need?" when they cast a spell. There are hundreds of spells, I don't want to learn them all! Recommend to your players that they write down the page number for their spells so you can quickly look them up! (or use DDB if you're not using real books).
Read through the DMG (Dungeon Masters Guide) and PHB (Player HandBook) to get an idea of how things work, and if there's any edge-case stuff you come across (like climbing onto a larger foe) then write down the page number rather than trying to absorb the information. Better to be able to quickly find the rules than to spend forever learning them all of by heart, and they never come up.
Personal experience says that once you get in the game, you won't spend time looking up edge cases -you'll find the confidence to make a ruling on them for the sake of the fun at the table!
I just wanted to return to this thread and give a sincere THANK YOU to everyone for your thoughtful advice and encouragement. Our game yesterday was AMAZING! We played for almost 7 hours and went far beyond what I had prepared for the original session (thank **** I bought some prewritten oneshot content to tie in to the main adventure)! My two nieces had a great time, and my father in law was really impressed and overwhelmed with all of the changes in the game since he played 1e in the 80's.
There are, of course, some things I'm going to change for next time, but I felt confident and prepared going into the session and everyone had an incredible time.
I DID THE THING Y'ALL!!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Are you my freaking dad?!?" ~Gorgug Thistlespring
"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!"
As part of your preparation, work out what the goals of your NPCs are during the campaign. Then get yourself a wall calendar and use that to keep track of the passage of time and everything your PCs and NPCs do on a given day. (Since you are using it to keep track of relative days it doesn't matter if it uses a 7 or ten day week.). Keep as much of your notes on what your PCs do and your NPCs do on the calendar. This will enable you to track what your NPCs are able to accomplish while your PCs take short and long rest. Keeping track of what your NPCs are doing will give your world the verisimilitude it needs to give your adventure actual stakes.
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I'll be running my first ever session as a DM on Sunday. I've only played a handful of sessions as a PC and consumed a lot of actual play content (Dimension20, NADDPOD, Dungeons and Daddies, a smidge of Critical Role), plus I have quite a bit of professional improv and acting training.
I am, I think understandably, most concerned about the mechanics of the game. I know, I know, "make a ruling and move on", but I would like to be as fair and consistent as possible. Mistakes and bad calls happen, but I would like to minimize them for myself and my players.
That said, there are about a billion different printables and lists and resources for DM's, which is GREAT! I just...don't quite know where to start? When you were at the beginning of your DM journey, what did you find the most helpful/important as far as keeping track of everything and having handy reference for more complicated rules? I'm of course planning to expand and tweak as the campaign goes on, but having a solid base of things behind my DM screen to try out and edit as needed would be ideal.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions, I can't wait to play!
"Are you my freaking dad?!?" ~Gorgug Thistlespring
Honestly, reading through the DMG and PHB is good prep. Everyone has their own style, but most of the time it boils down to getting to the point where you're comfortable enough with your knowledge of the rules that you can improvise the rest. Maybe use sticky notes to mark important parts of the DMG & PHB for future reference (like the prices of gear, the stats of weapons/armor, etc).
I highly suggest looking up the lore on the monsters you use, because that extra flavor will breathe a lot of life into your game. Introducing something like Tucker's Kobolds to a campaign will be much more impactful than running the kobolds the same way you'd run goblins.
Having a first game be a little on rails is not a bad thing. Just try to leave room for some deviation. For instance, if you start the game with them having already accepted a job to escort a wagon to the next town, and you had every player pick something big that their characters needed to save up money for that was highly important to them, then your party should follow the path you laid out, and not randomly decide to cross the countryside to go to have a beach-episode on a random coast you didn't prepare. This setup greatly reduces how much you have to prepare, but try to account for different approaches the party might take. (ex: Maybe they'll ford the stream and be attacked by Quippers, or maybe they'll travel hours to the next crossing which they'll find is currently occupied by bandits that took out this bridge to force travel through their location. The players still get a combat encounter either way, but their decisions determined which encounter they got.
My first game I ran started with the player characters waking up in an ancient crypt from a lost civilization, and having to utilize their skills to find a way out, navigating collapsing tunnels, underground rivers, giant rodents/bugs, and rust monsters. As I got more comfortable, I opened up the rest of the world to the players, and over the next three-ish years of the campaign, they went from basic villagers, to the defeaters of dragons, fiends, and an arch-lich.
I hope this is at least a little helpful.
For me the biggest thing early on was having notes for myself. An outline of what I thought the session was likely to cover, and then a couple of scenarios that could be easily adapted if the players made choices that I wasn't expecting. A handful of NPC names with a couple of personality traits each in case I needed to wing it while still trying to manage other parts of on-the-fly situations, that kind of thing. I think if you've played the game some and watched some actual play, with your improv experience you'll do a great job. Good luck and have fun!
Ensure that you fully understand the core rules. Read up on:
If you have a good knowledge of those, then everything else can be improvised when needed.
Call up a web page or have a handout (the standard DM screen is good for this) that has Conditions listed on them. That's the only sheet of notes you're likely to need.
Don't run something that's too complicated.
Start the characters at level 1. Level 1 is a training tool for you as well as the players because it keeps things simple.
Run a session zero, not the first adventure. This sounds quite boring, but it's essential for you to be able to run the best campaign that you can run. There are countless campaigns that could have been saved a huge amount of grief before starting if a session zero had been run, because it's your best bet in ensuring that everyone is trying to play the same game. If you're too eager to play to run one, then send the players a set of Session Zero instructions so that they can read through them.
Talk to your players about their characters before you begin and ensure the following:
My #1 piece of advice is to watch Matt Colville’s Running the Game series. It’s a treasure trove of great advice:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&index=1&t=22s
After that, here are my personal top tips:
Welcome to the other side of the DM’s screen!
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Don't overprepare.
If you are homebrewing a campaign outline the story beats, maps, and encounters that COULD be covered in the session, don't prepare from a linear perspective as there is no true predicting what your players may do.
If you are using a published adventure, say a WotC campaign or something from DMSGuild.com then spends an hour at most going over the materials provided jot some notes down but have a good enough understanding with what's written so not every five minute there is a "pause in the action" as you read up on what happens next.
You'll spend more time improving in a game so keep that in mind that not everything is going to go according to plan. This is a skill you'll develop and hone as you have more sessions.
Don't let the game discourage you. If you walk away thinking you did a poor job, more likely than not you are taking it too hard on yourself, because I'm sure the players had a good time. If you think you messed up make a note of it and go research it or do what you've already have done ask questions here. There is a lot of great people who have helped me along the way and I ask really DUMB questions. I've just celebrated my 101 sessions (To all the others reading this who know me; I know shocking.) and I wouldn't have accomplished that without the help of the people here. So leverage the forums as an important resource.
Finally, one laugh is all it takes to make a lasting memory at the table.
You are going to be fine. You are going to be great. Now go roll some dice.
I'll second a lot of the advice given so far. Here are a few more things.
You're at the start of a great journey! enjoy it!
"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!"
This is a really good one, and here is a great source for names (Fantasy Name Generators) I use the Game of Thrones: Westeros naming engine for my NPC, unique but pronounceable.
If you're a Tolkien fan and you know what you want your name to mean there is always this site:
https://funtranslations.com/elvish
It's not 100% accurate (i.e., Turin's blade, Gurthang, meaning "Iron Death" being a compound word doesn't translate that way, but as "Ang gurth" in the translator) but you can create your own compounded names. It even has an Orcish translator.
Will definitely echo "don't overprepare".
Some riffs on that theme:
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm about to start DMing again after not doing it at all since about 1995. Much has changed, but the core of the game is still what I remember.
I'll be running an updated version of my old homebrewed 1E world. Players will meet in jail, get rescued, then dumped outside a town where they can find lodging, supplies, and employment or rumors of adventure. They can take one of the obvious hooks, or they can just go exploring--I make my own random encounter charts that include some encounters related to story arcs, some non-combat encounters,, and a small chance of something special, possibly a god in disguise or other powerful entity that could become important later....
I like to throw out a lot of clues, and let the party do what they will. Mystery is good. Let the party wonder about stuff, while I just sorta smile, maybe roll some dice behind the screen, throw in a few facials, scribble a quick note, look directly at a player, write a note, etc.
One of my players has agreed to help me with the 5E mechanics on the down low....
The important thing is to understand the things you intend to use. If you have a creature who can leave someone paralyzed and incapacitated, look up exactly what those conditions mean. If you're running a monster which can cast firebolt innately, then look up how that spell works.
Make it clear to the players that they are expected to know what their spells do. As a DM I will ask a player "Ok, what does that need?" when they cast a spell. There are hundreds of spells, I don't want to learn them all! Recommend to your players that they write down the page number for their spells so you can quickly look them up! (or use DDB if you're not using real books).
Read through the DMG (Dungeon Masters Guide) and PHB (Player HandBook) to get an idea of how things work, and if there's any edge-case stuff you come across (like climbing onto a larger foe) then write down the page number rather than trying to absorb the information. Better to be able to quickly find the rules than to spend forever learning them all of by heart, and they never come up.
Personal experience says that once you get in the game, you won't spend time looking up edge cases -you'll find the confidence to make a ruling on them for the sake of the fun at the table!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Hi friends!
I just wanted to return to this thread and give a sincere THANK YOU to everyone for your thoughtful advice and encouragement. Our game yesterday was AMAZING! We played for almost 7 hours and went far beyond what I had prepared for the original session (thank **** I bought some prewritten oneshot content to tie in to the main adventure)! My two nieces had a great time, and my father in law was really impressed and overwhelmed with all of the changes in the game since he played 1e in the 80's.
There are, of course, some things I'm going to change for next time, but I felt confident and prepared going into the session and everyone had an incredible time.
I DID THE THING Y'ALL!!
"Are you my freaking dad?!?" ~Gorgug Thistlespring
🍾 Congratulations! 🎉
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I 2nd the Sposta, that's awesome!
Welcome on your first steps into a larger world !
"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'll 3rd IamSposta, Congratulations!
It's a euphoric feeling after a successful game.
As part of your preparation, work out what the goals of your NPCs are during the campaign. Then get yourself a wall calendar and use that to keep track of the passage of time and everything your PCs and NPCs do on a given day. (Since you are using it to keep track of relative days it doesn't matter if it uses a 7 or ten day week.). Keep as much of your notes on what your PCs do and your NPCs do on the calendar. This will enable you to track what your NPCs are able to accomplish while your PCs take short and long rest. Keeping track of what your NPCs are doing will give your world the verisimilitude it needs to give your adventure actual stakes.