Hi, I'm a first-time DM at my high school. I'm doing a bit with them where they pick a card out of a deck and it has predetermined consequences/rewards. I don't want to flood the world w/ gold because (for most of my party) it's their first campaign. We are about 4-ish sessions in.
What I have done, is divided them by color (black/red) and give each either a good or bad consequence. For example, Aces that are black have good consequences while red ones have bad ones. None of them have the same thing for both colors. Whatever one color is, the other one is the opposite. My party is level 1 and has 5 players.
Please tell me any suggestions you have, I really appreciate it!
P.S. If anyone has any tips for worldbuilding I would be glad to hear them. :)
Are you familiar with the Deck of Many Things? It sounds like basically what you're looking for is a watered down version of that that is less game-breaking. It might be worth looking through the Deck of Many Things effects and taking inspiration there, or just straight up create weaker/less intense effects for your deck.
My tip for worldbuilding: start small, have a broad macro-concept, but focus on the micro. Make the starting area feel real, out of the way of big events, let the occasional rumor of the wider world filter in. Then, when the players move on from the starting area, you broaden the world to fit them, adding detail and lore to the areas surrounding the starting area- neighboring counties, towns, landmarks, etc. And then the further out they travel, the more of the world is revealed to them and they begin to get caught up in those large macro concepts mentioned earlier, giving you space to develope them further.
Four sessions and they have gotten less than 300XP? Dude, throw some goblins at them or something, they ought to be second or third level by now.
Re world building. Start with the story you are trying to tell/build. Then think about how that would actually work? What motivaties the bad guys? Why do they do what they do? What are they trying to accomplish? Then think bigger. Region, country, trade, politics, nobles, merchant houses. Does that influence things? Make motivations clearer? Who's in charge? Does the main bad guy want to be the ruler of does he want to do his thing in secret, disdaining the "normal folk"? Which races live around there? How are the relations between the races? Use that to flesh out a coherent world where you easily can improvise stuff for when the players go off script because you know the world inside out. This will also suggest new plotlines, adventure hooks etc
Re rewards - imho gold is better than magic, it doesn't make you OP very quickly (unless you shower them with it). Besides there's lots of stuff gold can be used for, like fancy clothes, fast horses, jewelled rapiers, armor, ships, mansions, servants - you get the gist
Something I've seen used before that you might consider is roughly using the number of sessions to determine level-ups instead of Xp.
Play one session at L1, two sessions of L2, three sessions of L3, etc. Try to have something bigger for them to overcome before each level-up so it feels more earned. You may adjust the number of sessions up if you have particularly short sessions.
For planning your sessions, try to be planned a bit more than one session out, and when the party inevitably does something you didn't think of, do your best to roll with it to keep the story moving. Ex: if they start a bar brawl and lose, they may end up in jail where they meet someone there who's going to be executed, so he tells them where something he stole is, possibly through cryptic clues so when the party gets out, they have to solve riddles as they seach for the treasure, to find it before others who are inevitably looking for it find it. Any planned material you don't get to use, set it aside, because you'll have a chance to use it later, and after a while you'll have so much of this material saved up that ypur party will think that you've planned out everything, even though you're assembling a lot of it as it happens.
Play one session at L1, two sessions of L2, three sessions of L3, etc. Try to have something bigger for them to overcome before each level-up so it feels more earned. You may adjust the number of sessions up if you have particularly short sessions.
What a great idea! I wish I had thought of it. The only thing is that it will take approximately 190 sessions to reach level 20 (if that's important to you). Even playing every single week that's close to 4 years. A variation of your idea that I think I'm going to try is take the party level divided by 2 (rounded up) for the number of sessions. The progression would be one session at L1 and L2, two sessions at L3 and L4, three sessions at L5 and L6, etc. This will take only about 90 sessions or 2 years playing every single week. Although, admittedly, the lower levels may go by too fast. Something to think about, though.
Our sessions are about 2 hours long. We meet Tuesdays after school. Also, it's worth noting that I have only played 1 campaign as a player before and it was a one-shot (also w/ school).
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Hi, I'm a first-time DM at my high school. I'm doing a bit with them where they pick a card out of a deck and it has predetermined consequences/rewards. I don't want to flood the world w/ gold because (for most of my party) it's their first campaign. We are about 4-ish sessions in.
What I have done, is divided them by color (black/red) and give each either a good or bad consequence. For example, Aces that are black have good consequences while red ones have bad ones. None of them have the same thing for both colors. Whatever one color is, the other one is the opposite. My party is level 1 and has 5 players.
Please tell me any suggestions you have, I really appreciate it!
P.S. If anyone has any tips for worldbuilding I would be glad to hear them. :)
Are you familiar with the Deck of Many Things? It sounds like basically what you're looking for is a watered down version of that that is less game-breaking. It might be worth looking through the Deck of Many Things effects and taking inspiration there, or just straight up create weaker/less intense effects for your deck.
My tip for worldbuilding: start small, have a broad macro-concept, but focus on the micro. Make the starting area feel real, out of the way of big events, let the occasional rumor of the wider world filter in. Then, when the players move on from the starting area, you broaden the world to fit them, adding detail and lore to the areas surrounding the starting area- neighboring counties, towns, landmarks, etc. And then the further out they travel, the more of the world is revealed to them and they begin to get caught up in those large macro concepts mentioned earlier, giving you space to develope them further.
Four sessions and they have gotten less than 300XP? Dude, throw some goblins at them or something, they ought to be second or third level by now.
Re world building. Start with the story you are trying to tell/build. Then think about how that would actually work? What motivaties the bad guys? Why do they do what they do? What are they trying to accomplish? Then think bigger. Region, country, trade, politics, nobles, merchant houses. Does that influence things? Make motivations clearer? Who's in charge? Does the main bad guy want to be the ruler of does he want to do his thing in secret, disdaining the "normal folk"? Which races live around there? How are the relations between the races? Use that to flesh out a coherent world where you easily can improvise stuff for when the players go off script because you know the world inside out. This will also suggest new plotlines, adventure hooks etc
Re rewards - imho gold is better than magic, it doesn't make you OP very quickly (unless you shower them with it). Besides there's lots of stuff gold can be used for, like fancy clothes, fast horses, jewelled rapiers, armor, ships, mansions, servants - you get the gist
Something I've seen used before that you might consider is roughly using the number of sessions to determine level-ups instead of Xp.
Play one session at L1, two sessions of L2, three sessions of L3, etc. Try to have something bigger for them to overcome before each level-up so it feels more earned. You may adjust the number of sessions up if you have particularly short sessions.
For planning your sessions, try to be planned a bit more than one session out, and when the party inevitably does something you didn't think of, do your best to roll with it to keep the story moving. Ex: if they start a bar brawl and lose, they may end up in jail where they meet someone there who's going to be executed, so he tells them where something he stole is, possibly through cryptic clues so when the party gets out, they have to solve riddles as they seach for the treasure, to find it before others who are inevitably looking for it find it. Any planned material you don't get to use, set it aside, because you'll have a chance to use it later, and after a while you'll have so much of this material saved up that ypur party will think that you've planned out everything, even though you're assembling a lot of it as it happens.
What a great idea! I wish I had thought of it. The only thing is that it will take approximately 190 sessions to reach level 20 (if that's important to you). Even playing every single week that's close to 4 years. A variation of your idea that I think I'm going to try is take the party level divided by 2 (rounded up) for the number of sessions. The progression would be one session at L1 and L2, two sessions at L3 and L4, three sessions at L5 and L6, etc. This will take only about 90 sessions or 2 years playing every single week. Although, admittedly, the lower levels may go by too fast. Something to think about, though.
Anyway, thanks for the great idea.
Lee
Our sessions are about 2 hours long. We meet Tuesdays after school. Also, it's worth noting that I have only played 1 campaign as a player before and it was a one-shot (also w/ school).