I’ve been playing some DnD with friends IRL the past few months and wanted to try out DM’ing. we don’t have 1 forever DM but we do have a main DM and other DM’s occasionally (people with some or a lot of DnD/DM experience). I wanted to try make an adventure on a tropical island with some werewolves or similar monsters (will likely be a 2 session story). Any tips on a starters DM’ guide (except for YouTube? I just want to read it at my own leisure). it will be aimed at 4 PC’s around level 5-6
I was hoping to be the first person to put you onto Matt Colville this time, but you specified no YouTube guides.. damn.
I honestly haven't come across any comprehensive texts on how to run the game, other than the Dungeon Master Guide, if you haven't already picked that up.
I was hoping to be the first person to put you onto Matt Colville this time, but you specified no YouTube guides.. damn.
I honestly haven't come across any comprehensive texts on how to run the game, other than the Dungeon Master Guide, if you haven't already picked that up.
If it hadn’t been for them specifying “no YouTube” I would have beaten you by 10 minutes. 😉
It's not that I'm veto'ing Youtube guides, i just often get annoyed by certain people's voices. And reading can be done at work or in the train or something. but If anyone has YouTube guides with a pleasant voice I'm open to it :)
It's not that I'm veto'ing Youtube guides, i just often get annoyed by certain people's voices. And reading can be done at work or in the train or something. but If anyone has YouTube guides with a pleasant voice I'm open to it :)
In that case, check out the series by Matt Colville as recommended by syzygyeolith and IamSposta. I am also new to DM'ing and these videos are really good. I started by picking out the topics I thought were most useful/interesting but then ended up starting at the beginning and going through the whole series because they are all great (not through it yet, there are a lot).
One important thing. You can read and watch all the instruction there is, but you will learn the most from doing. After you run part one, you will have much higher capacity to absorb the tips and tricks you come across.
One shots are a great way to start out! Good luck!
The 5 room dungeon was the method I used to create the first game I ever ran. Very simplistic and straight forward. Or good for popping into the middle of an adventure for a cave/dungeon. Definitely recommend.
Don’t really know of any guides and I’m talking out of my 4$$ so take my personal opinion with a grain of salt but... I’d just jump in head first, for me personally I’m really surprised once I put pen to paper it just ends up snowballing almost inexplicably. Intro, hook, journey, twists along the way, climax/conclusion which could also be another twist or something unexpected, leaving it open to the possibility for more, but they’ll need a sense of accomplishment even if the ending is left open. The thing I focus on personally is the unexpected. It’s boring if the quest is “there’s werewolves over there and we don’t like that, please kill them” you get there, there’s werewolves, you kill them and get reward. That’s ok sometimes sure, but it’s more interesting if you get to the werewolves and as you’re fighting through their lair find evidence the person that hired you is actually a werewolf themself, and lures people to the island to add to the werewolf ranks. Now you have an unexpected extension to the quest line and have to go back and deal with the original guy. You could even then throw another twist/development on top of that, why are they doing this? Maybe they were run out of their old home and are gathering ranks to take it back, then there’s another extension.
I think an island is a good idea though, keeps things contained and easier to improvise if they go off the rails, but I think? most people expect one-shots to be railroady anyway, which also makes them easier to create, imo. Good luck!
Some info on our group: we are running a home brew campaign with 1 established end of campaign baddy, but in the meantime everyone who DM’s just kinda makes up some stories that are realistic in a DnD setting. We’re also not the kind of group that people often meme about who completely go off the rails. I had the idea to make them wake up on a boat on its way to the isles with no memory of how they got there, and slowly have them discover why they are at the island and what’s going on. There will be a were-something or 2 of them attacking the city at night but that would be an encounter once they enter the temple, and there they would find another encounter. So talking “5 rooms” it’d be village place a, village place b, temple a, temple b, temple c. And then I’d need some more story. I do feel like it’s a bit much for my first time DM’ing.
By the way, 5 rooms doesn't necessarily mean 5 battles. Role play events count as a room, as do puzzles. (Also, 5 isn't a hard and fast number, but it's a good starting point. ) If your sessions are 3 hours, I recommend 3 battles tops per session. Maybe only 2, if one battle is really big.
If you feel it's too much, try to see if you can find redundant encounters and cut them.
Thanks, that did help! Had to google cause the link didn't work, but the encounter looks interesting. I might even confuse my players by having a gnome or goblin be a smaller werewolf but have that one be the pack leader ;)
Few follow up questions: How do you guys keep track of monster hp, dmg done per round to monsters in a non digital way? And how do I determine the DC of a skill check? Our DM has the DM Guide but he doesn't exactly live close and i want to surprise them by saying i've got a session or 2 ready for them :)
A DM screen is way, WAY better to run the game from than the DMG! It's basically a cheat sheet for rules that are scattered across hundreds of pages of reference books. I keep my DM screen pages and other stuff in a binder, cause that works for me.
I also keep track of monster HP on scratch paper. Jot down the name of each monster (werewolf 1, werewolf 2, boss wolf, etc) and their HP below that. When damage is done, cross of the old HP and write the new.
For tracking HP I just write out a graph with the creatures across the top row and mark the hp down like I’m doing subtraction and might include some other notes like an ability I’m likely to forget and the creature’s AC.
Lyxen provided a nice table for general DC guidelines.
Personally I don’t think I’ve ever done a check lower than 10 unless I’m having them roll just for the possibility of a natural 1. Some of my go-to DCs are 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20, 25 depending on the circumstances of course. Don’t really know why, those just seem to come out of my mouth the most.
Right now I'm using the encounter builder and combat tracker betas on DDB, and part of my session prep involves adding my possible combat encounters on there before each session.
However, before I was doing that, I would more-or-less do the same thing by making a monster list on paper, giving each monster/npc they encountered some physical quirk by which to identify them. For example, it wouldn't be 'zombie 1', it would be 'zombie with missing nose'. This made it easier for my players to communicate who they wanted to attack out of a group of multiple monsters of the same time, and made it easier for me to keep track of damage done to them in the little row I'd made.
As far as skill checks go, it's pretty hard to go past the guidelines of 'below 10 its something I only make them check in stressful scenarios', and the rough gradient of 11 to 25 for how difficult I think that task would reasonably be. Unless everyone is very high level there is no point setting the DC higher than they can possibly roll, unless you don't want them accomplishing that goal (in which case it's up to you if you want them to know they never had a chance). There is also the policy of 'taking 20' (i.e. assuming they rolled the highest they could) anyway when the consequences of failing a task is nothing more than a wasted 6 seconds, in which case the difficulty of the said task really doesn't matter at all.
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I’ve been playing some DnD with friends IRL the past few months and wanted to try out DM’ing. we don’t have 1 forever DM but we do have a main DM and other DM’s occasionally (people with some or a lot of DnD/DM experience). I wanted to try make an adventure on a tropical island with some werewolves or similar monsters (will likely be a 2 session story). Any tips on a starters DM’ guide (except for YouTube? I just want to read it at my own leisure).
it will be aimed at 4 PC’s around level 5-6
I was hoping to be the first person to put you onto Matt Colville this time, but you specified no YouTube guides.. damn.
I honestly haven't come across any comprehensive texts on how to run the game, other than the Dungeon Master Guide, if you haven't already picked that up.
If it hadn’t been for them specifying “no YouTube” I would have beaten you by 10 minutes. 😉
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
It's not that I'm veto'ing Youtube guides, i just often get annoyed by certain people's voices. And reading can be done at work or in the train or something. but If anyone has YouTube guides with a pleasant voice I'm open to it :)
In that case, check out the series by Matt Colville as recommended by syzygyeolith and IamSposta. I am also new to DM'ing and these videos are really good. I started by picking out the topics I thought were most useful/interesting but then ended up starting at the beginning and going through the whole series because they are all great (not through it yet, there are a lot).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&index=2&t=1s
Voice is so subjective! (I don't really worry about voice in videos, though.)
I have used this video over and over to design and run one shots. If you don't like the voice, it's under 7 minutes...
https://youtu.be/y0fP5x-O9lg
Likewise, if you search "5 room dungeon," (aka 5 phase adventure) there are good written guides on how to build a short adventure. Like this:
https://www.roleplayingtips.com/5-room-dungeons/
One important thing. You can read and watch all the instruction there is, but you will learn the most from doing. After you run part one, you will have much higher capacity to absorb the tips and tricks you come across.
One shots are a great way to start out! Good luck!
The 5 room dungeon was the method I used to create the first game I ever ran. Very simplistic and straight forward. Or good for popping into the middle of an adventure for a cave/dungeon. Definitely recommend.
Don’t really know of any guides and I’m talking out of my 4$$ so take my personal opinion with a grain of salt but... I’d just jump in head first, for me personally I’m really surprised once I put pen to paper it just ends up snowballing almost inexplicably. Intro, hook, journey, twists along the way, climax/conclusion which could also be another twist or something unexpected, leaving it open to the possibility for more, but they’ll need a sense of accomplishment even if the ending is left open. The thing I focus on personally is the unexpected. It’s boring if the quest is “there’s werewolves over there and we don’t like that, please kill them” you get there, there’s werewolves, you kill them and get reward. That’s ok sometimes sure, but it’s more interesting if you get to the werewolves and as you’re fighting through their lair find evidence the person that hired you is actually a werewolf themself, and lures people to the island to add to the werewolf ranks. Now you have an unexpected extension to the quest line and have to go back and deal with the original guy. You could even then throw another twist/development on top of that, why are they doing this? Maybe they were run out of their old home and are gathering ranks to take it back, then there’s another extension.
I think an island is a good idea though, keeps things contained and easier to improvise if they go off the rails, but I think? most people expect one-shots to be railroady anyway, which also makes them easier to create, imo. Good luck!
Some info on our group: we are running a home brew campaign with 1 established end of campaign baddy, but in the meantime everyone who DM’s just kinda makes up some stories that are realistic in a DnD setting. We’re also not the kind of group that people often meme about who completely go off the rails.
I had the idea to make them wake up on a boat on its way to the isles with no memory of how they got there, and slowly have them discover why they are at the island and what’s going on. There will be a were-something or 2 of them attacking the city at night but that would be an encounter once they enter the temple, and there they would find another encounter. So talking “5 rooms” it’d be village place a, village place b, temple a, temple b, temple c. And then I’d need some more story.
I do feel like it’s a bit much for my first time DM’ing.
Sounds like a plan!
By the way, 5 rooms doesn't necessarily mean 5 battles. Role play events count as a room, as do puzzles. (Also, 5 isn't a hard and fast number, but it's a good starting point. ) If your sessions are 3 hours, I recommend 3 battles tops per session. Maybe only 2, if one battle is really big.
If you feel it's too much, try to see if you can find redundant encounters and cut them.
Have a look at DnDBeyond Encounter of the week series (Encounter of the Week). Maybe you could build off something like this: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/450-encounter-of-the-week-werewolves-on-the-warpath. Or take parts, drop others and bring in something else. These are often small enough to be manageable, gives an indication of what an encounter looks like and give a good base to build something from.
Thanks, that did help! Had to google cause the link didn't work, but the encounter looks interesting. I might even confuse my players by having a gnome or goblin be a smaller werewolf but have that one be the pack leader ;)
Few follow up questions: How do you guys keep track of monster hp, dmg done per round to monsters in a non digital way? And how do I determine the DC of a skill check? Our DM has the DM Guide but he doesn't exactly live close and i want to surprise them by saying i've got a session or 2 ready for them :)
A printable DM screen will have rules of thumb for skill checks. People have generously shared their versions online. Here's one I liked:
https://imgur.com/a/IXjjg
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7rucyu/printable_dm_screen_5e/
A DM screen is way, WAY better to run the game from than the DMG! It's basically a cheat sheet for rules that are scattered across hundreds of pages of reference books. I keep my DM screen pages and other stuff in a binder, cause that works for me.
I also keep track of monster HP on scratch paper. Jot down the name of each monster (werewolf 1, werewolf 2, boss wolf, etc) and their HP below that. When damage is done, cross of the old HP and write the new.
For tracking HP I just write out a graph with the creatures across the top row and mark the hp down like I’m doing subtraction and might include some other notes like an ability I’m likely to forget and the creature’s AC.
Lyxen provided a nice table for general DC guidelines.
Personally I don’t think I’ve ever done a check lower than 10 unless I’m having them roll just for the possibility of a natural 1. Some of my go-to DCs are 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20, 25 depending on the circumstances of course. Don’t really know why, those just seem to come out of my mouth the most.
Right now I'm using the encounter builder and combat tracker betas on DDB, and part of my session prep involves adding my possible combat encounters on there before each session.
However, before I was doing that, I would more-or-less do the same thing by making a monster list on paper, giving each monster/npc they encountered some physical quirk by which to identify them. For example, it wouldn't be 'zombie 1', it would be 'zombie with missing nose'. This made it easier for my players to communicate who they wanted to attack out of a group of multiple monsters of the same time, and made it easier for me to keep track of damage done to them in the little row I'd made.
As far as skill checks go, it's pretty hard to go past the guidelines of 'below 10 its something I only make them check in stressful scenarios', and the rough gradient of 11 to 25 for how difficult I think that task would reasonably be. Unless everyone is very high level there is no point setting the DC higher than they can possibly roll, unless you don't want them accomplishing that goal (in which case it's up to you if you want them to know they never had a chance). There is also the policy of 'taking 20' (i.e. assuming they rolled the highest they could) anyway when the consequences of failing a task is nothing more than a wasted 6 seconds, in which case the difficulty of the said task really doesn't matter at all.