Hey! so i'm a somewhat newish dm, only dmed lost mines a few times (not until completion) and a bit of curse of strahd a bit.. I was really looking into creating my own story and have been thinking about it alot, but I have no idea how to even get started on such a daunting task! any advice would be greatly appreciated :)
I think my first piece of advice would be to start off writing a single session adventure. Keep it simple. Start with a villain you like, or an encounter you think might be fun, and build a session around that. Create an instigating event, something to set your players off in the direction of the villain, a few encounters along the way, a couple fun NPCs, and maybe a fun set piece or two.
I'd do that for awhile, until you get the hang of creating your own content, and you figure out what kind of games you like to run. Jumping right into a whole campaign is super daunting, as you say.
If you do want to take the plunge, and develop a whole campaign, I'd try to keep things loose. Come up with a starting location, NPCs there, a few nearby adventure locations, a villain or two, and a larger plot that might be happening underneath, and that might lead elsewhere. I wouldn't try to write out a big story, with beats for whatever the players are supposed to do. That really never works out. The players usually go their own way and you are forced to improvise anyway. Just work one stage at a time.
There are a bunch of great resources online, but it can be overwhelming to sift through it all. I'd recommend looking through Matt Colville's videos on YouTube and see if any of the titles stand out as something you'd like to dig into more. He has some great advice for creating content on your own.
This video is a good place to start. It's for brand new DMs, but he has some good advice, and it leads into his other videos.
Good luck! Happy DMing!
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"If you don't hear anything on the other side of the door, it's probably a trap."
there are two main methods: small to big, or big to small.
one starts with a small location, e.g. a town. You then start filling this town characters, stories, intrigues, and then you zoom out and make the world bigger from there.
The other starts with an idea for a world. You might have some meta-narrative for the world - e.g. the world was formed in a clash of gods; the world is currently in a zombie apocalypse; etc. From there, you start zooming in to create smaller parts that fit into the big picture.
Either way, one thing that can help is to remember that no thing happens without cause or consequence. E.g. grain prices are high. Why? Perhaps there was a famine. Why did that happen? Was it natural, or externally caused? Perhaps a secretive warlord has a dragon under his control, and is using the havoc it can cause to crops to plunge surrounding kingdoms into havoc, making them easier to conquer.
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Hey! so i'm a somewhat newish dm, only dmed lost mines a few times (not until completion) and a bit of curse of strahd a bit.. I was really looking into creating my own story and have been thinking about it alot, but I have no idea how to even get started on such a daunting task! any advice would be greatly appreciated :)
I think my first piece of advice would be to start off writing a single session adventure. Keep it simple. Start with a villain you like, or an encounter you think might be fun, and build a session around that. Create an instigating event, something to set your players off in the direction of the villain, a few encounters along the way, a couple fun NPCs, and maybe a fun set piece or two.
I'd do that for awhile, until you get the hang of creating your own content, and you figure out what kind of games you like to run. Jumping right into a whole campaign is super daunting, as you say.
If you do want to take the plunge, and develop a whole campaign, I'd try to keep things loose. Come up with a starting location, NPCs there, a few nearby adventure locations, a villain or two, and a larger plot that might be happening underneath, and that might lead elsewhere. I wouldn't try to write out a big story, with beats for whatever the players are supposed to do. That really never works out. The players usually go their own way and you are forced to improvise anyway. Just work one stage at a time.
There are a bunch of great resources online, but it can be overwhelming to sift through it all. I'd recommend looking through Matt Colville's videos on YouTube and see if any of the titles stand out as something you'd like to dig into more. He has some great advice for creating content on your own.
This video is a good place to start. It's for brand new DMs, but he has some good advice, and it leads into his other videos.
Good luck! Happy DMing!
"If you don't hear anything on the other side of the door, it's probably a trap."
there are two main methods: small to big, or big to small.
one starts with a small location, e.g. a town. You then start filling this town characters, stories, intrigues, and then you zoom out and make the world bigger from there.
The other starts with an idea for a world. You might have some meta-narrative for the world - e.g. the world was formed in a clash of gods; the world is currently in a zombie apocalypse; etc. From there, you start zooming in to create smaller parts that fit into the big picture.
Either way, one thing that can help is to remember that no thing happens without cause or consequence. E.g. grain prices are high. Why? Perhaps there was a famine. Why did that happen? Was it natural, or externally caused? Perhaps a secretive warlord has a dragon under his control, and is using the havoc it can cause to crops to plunge surrounding kingdoms into havoc, making them easier to conquer.