I'm a new DM with only 2 session's and with online friends.My campaign plays on the story from the essential kit, Dragon of icespire peak. One of my friends was suppose to play a throw away character bard to get started, that turned into the town Phandalin's new mayor/townmaster. The group already started planning big changes to the town like placing walls, training people to be garrison and must funny of all, changing the town name from Phandalin to, see in spoilers, adult joke
Phandalin
I'm feeling very overwhelmed what to do as DM on next session. I don't know how to run a town and let my friends control it as well. I only planned to let the party do some quests on the book. Anyone have any idea's?
First thought: Town walls need wood. So a party needs to go out and chop wood. Forests are dangerous and wood cutters need protection from attack. there is a session there.
You might try telling them, out of character, that you really don’t want to do this and ask if they can take a step back and play the adventure as designed. Try reminding them that you are new to this, and need more experience before you try and go doing a full homebrew campaign, which is what it will turn into. The game has to be fun for you, too, and if running this kind of a campaign isn’t what you want, it’s perfectly reasonable to steer things away from it.
If that doesn’t work, have some high level PCs show up and say they heard there’s a new mayor, and that he’s weak, and they are in charge now.
There is no reason the town's mayor should be some administrative coward!
This is actually a great way to give the party several choices of adventures. Have the townspeople line up with their grievances, such as "there are new bandits on the road" or "there's a strange new den in the swamp and something is eating my cows". That sort of thing. Let the mayor and his mates have some variety and, even more importantly, a sense of controlling their own storyline and destiny by picking which townsperson to help. Let the mayor dispatch guards to handle the other quests, and that can lead to you removing some less popular ones or adding flavor to harder ones (the guards don't return, or maybe they do, but in a mad panic).
This makes it easy for you to maybe make several small things up in short order that might expand as time goes on.
Definitely sounds like you're party is trying to town-simulator. I'd take that energy and use it to run a fun little town-building setting!
But here's the question: What do you want to do?
Some of the ideas mentioned by Bearfoot and Western are fantastic. Along with what Xalthu said, there are ways to get your party back on track.
I want to run the setting as written.
High level NPCs rolling into town to take over is a simple, heavy-handed approach that can be effective, as long as your players don't take it poorly. Another method to correct the party may be to have all those guards their training, along with any town workers, looking for pay. If the party doesn't have the funds (I'm assuming they don't), then it would be very easy for the townspeople to take the town into their own hands, or have a noble with influence come into the picture to take charge.
I want to see where they are going with this.
Your first goal is to un-overwhelm yourself. Create an administrative NPC if you aren't using Harbin Wester; A relative of a player, the old mayor's steward, a merchant smelling an opportunity. Let them handle the 'big picture' ideas that the players want to implement, leaving them free to handle all of the sure-to-be-silly events that you will throw at them session by session. Bandit or monster attacks, townspeople reporting ghost sightings, food shortages, or a letter that invites the party to interact as representatives to other locations. Western said it best, smaller things can definitely add up to a great overall story.
I like Xalthu and Western242's ideas. Having to defend the town is a classic campaign arc. Seven Samurai is a classic for a reason. Works as a Western, works as a fantasy epic, too. It gives you as a GM a ready cast of recurring characters the PCs care about, rivals, and so on. While it could devolve rapidly into monster of the week, it gives you the chance to put much more onto the RP end.
Building and training take time. If you're not interested in doing more with this right now, you can have that going on in the background while you do adventures.
The group already started planning big changes to the town like placing walls, training people to be garrison and must funny of all, changing the town name from Phandalin to, see in spoilers, adult joke
For the training, do any of the PCs have skills which would be relevant?
A fighter probably doesn't have the teaching skills to show a small army how to fight.
How many of the locals in Phandalin are actually willing to be trained into a militia? Is that why the moved to the frontier, or did they move there for another reason?
thanks for the reply guys, ill try to answer you all on this.
for what i want to do, i want that my friends to go on those quests that's written on book. because i spent a lot of time on reading through the book and prepping for them. I don't mind if they went off course or do something else. but I don't want them to stay in town just to be townmaster and let someone else do the quests. just like the previous npc mayor. so i kinda want to stay in book but i also want to see where it goes. eventually i want also they to enjoy it and they really seems to enjoy the last session.
Xalthu suggestions are quiet good but i'm not sure if my friends taken it lightly with the high leveled pcs taken over what they worked hard on it. I even forced a false election so the bard lose but my party want to win, so they fought back with high rolls and i couldn't quickly recover or make up to get it back on track.
Western242 idea is what i kinda i had in my mind, while in session. find a way that they need to the quest to help the town. I also already made a mayor secretary npc at the spot so she can handle their 'big picture'. But they really want to get involved in town and told the secretary to hire someone for the quests. It upsets me.
I can tell them that i don't want to let them run the town. because it has to be fun for me too. But isn't suppose to be dm just to be a storyteller? that the player changes the things and people around them.
i hope you guys want to help further. while typing and remembering back how the sessions went, i also have some other question.
while the party attempt to persuade the crowd for kicking off the old mayor Harbin Wester and other scenarios, one of my friends (sorceress) used minor illusion, making fake statements to deceive the towns people.And she 'claimed' that magic as a voice recorder instead of illusion. I let her roll for persuasion with advantage. I'm not sure if using minor illusion that way is cheating or very clever. I assumed a normal peasant or worker wouldn't know any type magic so i didn't really rolled their intelligence to examine it.
The only Pc who wants to handle the garrison is a roque. But his other campaign character is a leader of an garrison or small army. Maybe he got them mixed up.
other party members don't really have the skills for it. Is that important for training troops?
how many locals in town willing to train? IDK. The books says it haves 40 to 50 buildings that are workers, traders and children. Town has no walls or garrison but adults are in within easy reach in case the need for arms. The way I see that everyone in town already have a job or is a kid.
are they still allowed back? because its basically their base of operations. its the place where they rest, buy equipment and find quest on the job board?
If the party spend time in the town playing mayor, building a wall around the town, and training up a militia; then they will start hearing reports that the threats that they know which are out there (i.e. posted on the notice board) have caused real damage to the local populace, so the townsfolk won't be happy with them and will insist that they try and help by dealing with what is happening out there NOW rather than in 3 months time when they have finished improving the town.
You only need to burn one of the quests as a "failed" quest for the town to start getting worried that these "heroes" that arrived aren't doing what heroes are supposed to do, and that their friends are being killed due to their negligence.
After all, the general concept of the quests is that the dragon has moved in, so that has pushed the "top" of the monster tree out of their own abode, so they have moved outwards and taken over the "second rank"'s territory, so the second rank have moved further away, and so on. A cascade effect which pushes the monsters closer to town.
The longer the party leave it, the closer they'll get to town and build up their own stronger encampments.
I can tell them that i don't want to let them run the town. because it has to be fun for me too. But isn't suppose to be dm just to be a storyteller? that the player changes the things and people around them.
In short, no, the DM isn’t just a storyteller. The DM is playing, too. You are playing 1,001 roles while each of the players has 1. You are absolutely allowed to want to enjoy the game, and to want to play the way you want to play.
You might suggest that they come back to running the town. Play through the adventure (which you worked hard to learn, for them) and then after it’s done, you can come back to running a town. You could frame it as, the town isn’t going to be secure until they handle this situation, so if they really care, they need to take care of it.
That can allow you to play through what you want, and give you more time to find your feet as a DM before you just go off the rails. It might work as a compromise.
Did you have a session 0? That’s typically where you hash out, before starting, what everyone wants out of the game. But you can still have one, to allow an out of character discussion. It can really help reduce frustration levels for all, if you spend a few minutes working out how you’re going to play, and what kind of campaign everyone, DM included, wants.
You can send them on quests and just have the town tasks update when they come back. If they want the town to have walls, the mayor's job isn't to work on building the wall every day. It can go like this:
Decision for the town
quest
update on the town's progress and possibly a new decision point
quest
back to 3.
I doubt they want to micromanage every single thing in the town, and if they do you can point them to one of the medieval town simulator games available on Steam. Ideally they just want to make decisions that steer the fate of the town. These decisions can be made in 15 minutes between quests and the townsfolk can make it happen while the party is out doing D&D stuff.
There are no official fifth edition rules for running a town. You can look to home brew on the DMs guild or else where, alternatively if you are willing there are rules in path finder and older editions.
Option 2 abstract the running of the town and run a more traditional dnd adventure
Another option is to separate the players from directly running it a bit by having a steward, noble or something similar to come in and take over the administrative stuff for the town. Then they simply need to provide money and things so they just need to go one quests to find that. You can take those quests from other modules to make it easier for your self or similarly go to pre-made home brew. If you feel up to it you can even make a quest or two yourself.
Option 3 say no
If you don't feel comfortable wit the town running aspect say you don't want to run it and provide them other options
their character not being the mayor
making new characters
a time skip where all the town running stuff just kind of happens and they go back to adventuring later
some one else dms running the town
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I'm a new DM with only 2 session's and with online friends.My campaign plays on the story from the essential kit, Dragon of icespire peak. One of my friends was suppose to play a throw away character bard to get started, that turned into the town Phandalin's new mayor/townmaster. The group already started planning big changes to the town like placing walls, training people to be garrison and must funny of all, changing the town name from Phandalin to, see in spoilers, adult joke
PhandalinI'm feeling very overwhelmed what to do as DM on next session. I don't know how to run a town and let my friends control it as well. I only planned to let the party do some quests on the book. Anyone have any idea's?
Sounds fun.
First thought: Town walls need wood. So a party needs to go out and chop wood. Forests are dangerous and wood cutters need protection from attack. there is a session there.
You might try telling them, out of character, that you really don’t want to do this and ask if they can take a step back and play the adventure as designed. Try reminding them that you are new to this, and need more experience before you try and go doing a full homebrew campaign, which is what it will turn into. The game has to be fun for you, too, and if running this kind of a campaign isn’t what you want, it’s perfectly reasonable to steer things away from it.
If that doesn’t work, have some high level PCs show up and say they heard there’s a new mayor, and that he’s weak, and they are in charge now.
There is no reason the town's mayor should be some administrative coward!
This is actually a great way to give the party several choices of adventures. Have the townspeople line up with their grievances, such as "there are new bandits on the road" or "there's a strange new den in the swamp and something is eating my cows". That sort of thing. Let the mayor and his mates have some variety and, even more importantly, a sense of controlling their own storyline and destiny by picking which townsperson to help. Let the mayor dispatch guards to handle the other quests, and that can lead to you removing some less popular ones or adding flavor to harder ones (the guards don't return, or maybe they do, but in a mad panic).
This makes it easy for you to maybe make several small things up in short order that might expand as time goes on.
Definitely sounds like you're party is trying to town-simulator. I'd take that energy and use it to run a fun little town-building setting!
But here's the question: What do you want to do?
Some of the ideas mentioned by Bearfoot and Western are fantastic. Along with what Xalthu said, there are ways to get your party back on track.
I want to run the setting as written.
High level NPCs rolling into town to take over is a simple, heavy-handed approach that can be effective, as long as your players don't take it poorly.
Another method to correct the party may be to have all those guards their training, along with any town workers, looking for pay. If the party doesn't have the funds (I'm assuming they don't), then it would be very easy for the townspeople to take the town into their own hands, or have a noble with influence come into the picture to take charge.
I want to see where they are going with this.
Your first goal is to un-overwhelm yourself. Create an administrative NPC if you aren't using Harbin Wester; A relative of a player, the old mayor's steward, a merchant smelling an opportunity. Let them handle the 'big picture' ideas that the players want to implement, leaving them free to handle all of the sure-to-be-silly events that you will throw at them session by session.
Bandit or monster attacks, townspeople reporting ghost sightings, food shortages, or a letter that invites the party to interact as representatives to other locations. Western said it best, smaller things can definitely add up to a great overall story.
Good luck, and have fun!
I like Xalthu and Western242's ideas. Having to defend the town is a classic campaign arc. Seven Samurai is a classic for a reason. Works as a Western, works as a fantasy epic, too. It gives you as a GM a ready cast of recurring characters the PCs care about, rivals, and so on. While it could devolve rapidly into monster of the week, it gives you the chance to put much more onto the RP end.
Building and training take time. If you're not interested in doing more with this right now, you can have that going on in the background while you do adventures.
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
For the training, do any of the PCs have skills which would be relevant?
A fighter probably doesn't have the teaching skills to show a small army how to fight.
How many of the locals in Phandalin are actually willing to be trained into a militia? Is that why the moved to the frontier, or did they move there for another reason?
thanks for the reply guys, ill try to answer you all on this.
for what i want to do, i want that my friends to go on those quests that's written on book. because i spent a lot of time on reading through the book and prepping for them. I don't mind if they went off course or do something else. but I don't want them to stay in town just to be townmaster and let someone else do the quests. just like the previous npc mayor. so i kinda want to stay in book but i also want to see where it goes. eventually i want also they to enjoy it and they really seems to enjoy the last session.
Xalthu suggestions are quiet good but i'm not sure if my friends taken it lightly with the high leveled pcs taken over what they worked hard on it. I even forced a false election so the bard lose but my party want to win, so they fought back with high rolls and i couldn't quickly recover or make up to get it back on track.
Western242 idea is what i kinda i had in my mind, while in session. find a way that they need to the quest to help the town. I also already made a mayor secretary npc at the spot so she can handle their 'big picture'. But they really want to get involved in town and told the secretary to hire someone for the quests. It upsets me.
I can tell them that i don't want to let them run the town. because it has to be fun for me too. But isn't suppose to be dm just to be a storyteller? that the player changes the things and people around them.
i hope you guys want to help further. while typing and remembering back how the sessions went, i also have some other question.
while the party attempt to persuade the crowd for kicking off the old mayor Harbin Wester and other scenarios, one of my friends (sorceress) used minor illusion, making fake statements to deceive the towns people.And she 'claimed' that magic as a voice recorder instead of illusion. I let her roll for persuasion with advantage. I'm not sure if using minor illusion that way is cheating or very clever. I assumed a normal peasant or worker wouldn't know any type magic so i didn't really rolled their intelligence to examine it.
Have someone find out that the pcs tricked everyone and chase them out of town with a mob
The only Pc who wants to handle the garrison is a roque. But his other campaign character is a leader of an garrison or small army. Maybe he got them mixed up.
other party members don't really have the skills for it. Is that important for training troops?
how many locals in town willing to train? IDK. The books says it haves 40 to 50 buildings that are workers, traders and children. Town has no walls or garrison but adults are in within easy reach in case the need for arms. The way I see that everyone in town already have a job or is a kid.
are they still allowed back? because its basically their base of operations. its the place where they rest, buy equipment and find quest on the job board?
If the party spend time in the town playing mayor, building a wall around the town, and training up a militia; then they will start hearing reports that the threats that they know which are out there (i.e. posted on the notice board) have caused real damage to the local populace, so the townsfolk won't be happy with them and will insist that they try and help by dealing with what is happening out there NOW rather than in 3 months time when they have finished improving the town.
You only need to burn one of the quests as a "failed" quest for the town to start getting worried that these "heroes" that arrived aren't doing what heroes are supposed to do, and that their friends are being killed due to their negligence.
After all, the general concept of the quests is that the dragon has moved in, so that has pushed the "top" of the monster tree out of their own abode, so they have moved outwards and taken over the "second rank"'s territory, so the second rank have moved further away, and so on. A cascade effect which pushes the monsters closer to town.
The longer the party leave it, the closer they'll get to town and build up their own stronger encampments.
In short, no, the DM isn’t just a storyteller. The DM is playing, too. You are playing 1,001 roles while each of the players has 1. You are absolutely allowed to want to enjoy the game, and to want to play the way you want to play.
You might suggest that they come back to running the town. Play through the adventure (which you worked hard to learn, for them) and then after it’s done, you can come back to running a town. You could frame it as, the town isn’t going to be secure until they handle this situation, so if they really care, they need to take care of it.
That can allow you to play through what you want, and give you more time to find your feet as a DM before you just go off the rails. It might work as a compromise.
Did you have a session 0? That’s typically where you hash out, before starting, what everyone wants out of the game. But you can still have one, to allow an out of character discussion. It can really help reduce frustration levels for all, if you spend a few minutes working out how you’re going to play, and what kind of campaign everyone, DM included, wants.
We didn't do session 0. We kinda rushed with character creation and started the first quest within the first session.
I think i should do session 0 with them. because they probably have no idea whats about.
You can send them on quests and just have the town tasks update when they come back. If they want the town to have walls, the mayor's job isn't to work on building the wall every day. It can go like this:
I doubt they want to micromanage every single thing in the town, and if they do you can point them to one of the medieval town simulator games available on Steam. Ideally they just want to make decisions that steer the fate of the town. These decisions can be made in 15 minutes between quests and the townsfolk can make it happen while the party is out doing D&D stuff.
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
Option 1 find rules and run the town
There are no official fifth edition rules for running a town. You can look to home brew on the DMs guild or else where, alternatively if you are willing there are rules in path finder and older editions.
Option 2 abstract the running of the town and run a more traditional dnd adventure
Another option is to separate the players from directly running it a bit by having a steward, noble or something similar to come in and take over the administrative stuff for the town. Then they simply need to provide money and things so they just need to go one quests to find that. You can take those quests from other modules to make it easier for your self or similarly go to pre-made home brew. If you feel up to it you can even make a quest or two yourself.
Option 3 say no
If you don't feel comfortable wit the town running aspect say you don't want to run it and provide them other options