Im looking to start a campaign with some friends in a while and I am not that familiar with dming. I was just looking for some helpful tips mainly with story creation and how to keep the story flowing from one quest or part to another. I can handle simpler things such as combat and dungeons, but I get confused when it comes to having a good and enjoyable story to play. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Well, you could do a premade adventure. If your players are new and you want to introduce them to the basics of DnD, you could do this adventure (PDF): https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1625-peril-in-pinebrook-a-free-introductory-adventure

It gives some good advice for everything.

Either use a premade adventure as suggested above, or you can adapt/steal stories from some kind of media that you enjoy. To keep the storying flowing, the key IMO is to have the villain of the story have multiple goals they are trying to achieve at the same time as the party is trying to stop them or to have multiple different villains and to foreshadow each one with one or maybe 2 hints in the previous plot. There are a few general types of stories that work well for D&D:

Overthrow a tyrant - example premade adventure: Curse of Strad. example in other media: Star Wars original trilogy, Narnia tLtWtW, Hunger Games

Subplots/arcs generally involve:

1. collecting magic items to build up the party's power,
2. searching out allies among the oppressed and doing some task for them to convince them to help the party out
3. investigating the tyrant & their allies to learn their weaknesses
4. infiltrating & killing the tyrant

Complications include:

1. The tyrant sending bounty hunters / assassins to kill or capture the party
2. Some possible allies actually being secret spies for the tyrant
3. The tyrant toying with the party with demonstrations of their strength
4. The tyrant punishing the party by killing their allies or innocent civilians that have helped the party

Prevent an invasion - example premade adventure: Dragonlance (I think?), Tyranny of Dragons, example in other media: Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones

Subplots/arcs generally involve:

1. Investigating & tracking the putative invasion to identify & locate it's leaders and determine their goals
2. Defending locations from attacks, and/or helping evacuate civilians during a retreat / before an attack.
3. Spreading awareness of the pending invasion and convincing factions to unite against it.
4. Escaping from a location that has been overrun
5. Finding / making a McGuffin to defeat the invader

Complications include:

1. the party's homebase surrendering / being captured or destroyed by the invasion force
2. the party being captured by enemy scouts
3. Enemy hunters trying to find the McGuffin before the party.

Find a McGuffin - example premade adventure: Waterdeep Dragon Heist, example in other media: parts of Wheel of Time, last two books of Harry Potter, the Hobbit.

*Note this is often a smaller arc within a larger story.

Subplots/arcs generally involve:

1. Solving puzzles to determine the location of the item
2. Doing tasks for people to gain clues as to the item's location
3. A rival group also trying to get the item

Complications include:

1. the item has been stolen from its original location
2. someone steals the item or a map / clue from the party

Road Trip - example premade adventure: Baldur's Gate Descent into Avernus, example in other media: the Hobbit, Star Trek Voyager, Harold and Kuman, Oregon Trail

This is basically: The party is trapped somewhere and needs to find a way home, or they need to get to a specific location for some reason and various complications arise on their way there.

Subplots/arcs generally involve:

1. Finding a possible shortcut and trying to best use it.
2. Needing to find supplies or somewhere safe to stay

Complication include:

1. getting lost.
2. potential allies betraying the party
3. something/someone blocking the path
4. getting robbed & having to retrieve the stolen items
5. breaking down and needing to find something to make repairs
6. having to make a detour

Serious advice - do not start with your own setting or adventure.

DM the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Icespire Peak) or Lost Mine of Phandelver first. If you really don't want to DM those, then read through them first. Look at them as an example of how the designers thought a good starter adventure (for both DM and players) should play out. Lost Mine of Phandelver does a lot wrong, but by studying it you can learn what goes wrong and what you feel you need to avoid in your adventures. Likewise though, it does a lot right. Picking out what it does well will give you a better experience than anyone can simply tell you. Dragon of Icespire peak takes a different tone and the adventure revolves around a quest board. So the 'story' is more built into the party's hands than the adventure's hands.

Once you've got to grips and seen an 'official' adventure in action, you'll have a better idea for how to design your own adventure. 


It's a bit like the advice new writers and new actors get - go and read absolutely as much as you can. Pouring through another person's adventure is hands down the best way to learn what works and what doesn't. Good writers read more than they write. Good actors watch other actors. They do it because exposing yourself to this stuff is the best way to learn.

The other piece of advice - the DM doesn't tell the story - the players do. I've seen too many DMs think that the story is theirs. It isn't. It belongs to all the players. As a DM (or GM) of any game you operate more like the level designer and/or game engine. You build out the world with your descriptions that the party will explore. The players through their actions tell the story. 

Quote from martintheactor >>

Serious advice - do not start with your own setting or adventure.

DM the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Icespire Peak) or Lost Mine of Phandelver first. If you really don't want to DM those, then read through them first. Look at them as an example of how the designers thought a good starter adventure (for both DM and players) should play out. Lost Mine of Phandelver does a lot wrong, but by studying it you can learn what goes wrong and what you feel you need to avoid in your adventures. Likewise though, it does a lot right. Picking out what it does well will give you a better experience than anyone can simply tell you. Dragon of Icespire peak takes a different tone and the adventure revolves around a quest board. So the 'story' is more built into the party's hands than the adventure's hands.

Once you've got to grips and seen an 'official' adventure in action, you'll have a better idea for how to design your own adventure. 


It's a bit like the advice new writers and new actors get - go and read absolutely as much as you can. Pouring through another person's adventure is hands down the best way to learn what works and what doesn't. Good writers read more than they write. Good actors watch other actors. They do it because exposing yourself to this stuff is the best way to learn.

The other piece of advice - the DM doesn't tell the story - the players do. I've seen too many DMs think that the story is theirs. It isn't. It belongs to all the players. As a DM (or GM) of any game you operate more like the level designer and/or game engine. You build out the world with your descriptions that the party will explore. The players through their actions tell the story. 

 
This is very good advice. 

I would only add that a D&D game doesn't have to be about anything profound, you don't even need a plot per say.  A group of adventures milling about a town, then going into a forest on their way to some ruin to explore where they fight monsters and find treasure... that, just by the act of executing that adventure will tell a story.  Like you don't need to do complex plot building in an attempt to be a great writer and storyteller to have a fun time playing D&D.   A story will dynamically generate for you just from executing the game which can be about nothing and you will be surprised how memorable a game like that can be.

That kind of writing and world-building ambitions you're talking about is perfectly natural, but you gotta learn to walk before you run, so keeping things simple at first isn't going to be any less fun and it will be a lot easier for you.  In time, doing story work and world-building will also become easy.  D&D is really only hard and complicated on your first few days, after that you'll be on the forum theorycrafting about D&D with the rest of us.

I may go against normal DnD beginner advice. I myself kinda made my own campaign. I used the intro and very basic story of Tyranny of Dragons (I say this VERY loosely), but have now gone a completely different direction. (And this is my first time!!) So really what works for you, premade or make your own. The using a basic story from media (which I constantly forget that term includes books) is a good idea. OSR4Ever is right however, there doesn't need to be a, and I quote, "Plot per say".That type of campaign is what I played the first time I played DnD and it was super fun.

Something I'm working on being better at as a relatively inexperienced gm is:

I reveal whats behind the gm screen too often, like a magician showing whats behind the curtain. Kills the magic! Don't be me.

I have some tips for you:

I took a premade campaign and made it homebrew. I took monsters, npcs and locations but I made my own story. Most of the stories have some evil guys. They try to reach a goal and the players have to find out who the evil guy is and what he wants. Maybe they are affected by a disease or something and have to find a cure and so on. Give them some serious reasons why they should follow the story.

ALSO a very big part: Most of the time your players will habe several paths to go. Maybe they decide to go into a dungeon. Then you have to think about: what will the evil guy do. The evil guy don't sit around doing nothing. He has a goal and he aims for it! So while your players are in the dungeon, the evil guy my steal an artifact or he may conquer a small town or village, maybe he collect souls and so on.

But also think about what the allies of your party will do. Maybe they try to prepare for an upcoming war or maybe they try to hide from the evil guy, maybe they look after something your party mentioned.

That will show your players that they have an impact.

Also if you want to lead them towards something, give them a hint for a special weapon, an artifact or something like that, that they might want to have.

Also not every NPC have to be interesting. Some NPCs just live their lifes and have nothing exciting to tell.

Try to concentrate on some important NPCs and try to make them likeable or hateable, depending on what you want.

Also be prepared to improvise. You never know what your players try to do.

That are some tips I have as a first time DM (some learnings I made through my campaign)

Quote from Bellion_Whiskmore >>

Im looking to start a campaign with some friends in a while and I am not that familiar with dming. I was just looking for some helpful tips mainly with story creation and how to keep the story flowing from one quest or part to another. I can handle simpler things such as combat and dungeons, but I get confused when it comes to having a good and enjoyable story to play. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 Think about what your bad guys are going to be doing and what their plans are even when the PCs aren't going to be interacting with them. Consider events in the future and think about how you can seed those into the campaign before they happen. For example, in my current campaign, one of the NPCs mentioned an attack was a test run in session 2. Fast forward and my PCs went off the rails and managed a meeting with the BBEG. As I already knew his plans, I let him slip and mention he was planning an attack now in session 18.

But also don't flesh things out completely, because you never know when the PCs will somehow manage to kill the BBEG long before you anticipated it to happen. 

Quote from HollerGetDollar17603 >>

Something I'm working on being better at as a relatively inexperienced gm is:

I reveal whats behind the gm screen too often, like a magician showing whats behind the curtain. Kills the magic! Don't be me.

 You don't have to use a screen. Just keep notes on the side and roll dice in the open. I've been doing it for a very long time (because as a kid I couldn't afford the "official Dungeon Master's Screen" 

It adds a level of authenticity to your game which your players will appreciate.

Oh and this: