I'm relatively new to DMing and had read that Sunless Citadel was a good module for someone to start with. I did a practice run with two of my players beforehand with something I created myself and it was great but once I got to the module things sort of fell apart. I found myself reading straight from my screen, spent a lot of time scrolling back and forth to find which room they were in, and it just overall was very disjointed and not smooth. Does anyone have any tips on how to make things run a little better?
1. Read the module beforehand. No one expects you to remember everything by heart, but you should at least have some idea about what's in each room.
2. Boxed text is good, but don't read it verbatim. Read it, see what important details the players need to know about the room, and tell them that instead.
3. Take notes. If a trap forces the player to do a con save or 2d4 poison damage, make a note and write "CON, 2d4 pois". Just things you know you're going to need quickly
4. If you're using something like roll20, prepare the rooms beforehand. This one is probably obvious, but if you've already placed the tokens, you don't need to check every 5 seconds to see what enemies are there. If you do it with a physical map, have the tokens or minis sorted by which rooms they appear in.
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"What do you mean I get disadvantage on persuasion?"
I don't know, Sneet, maybe because your argument is "Submit and become our pet"?
I just finished running this for my group of first time players, and it was my first time running a standard module from start to finish. My major piece of advice is don't be afraid of the choppiness. As SigrunNaryon said above, give it multiple reads. I think I skimmed it about 5 times and read it carefully 3 times, and it was still a little choppy, but as your players actually make their way through it'll get easier. Now for specific advice:
1. HAVE THE MAPS. If you're using roll20: follow the advice above. I was using roll20 and having the module pre-loaded and letting my characters move their own tokens was a HUGE help. If you're not, have physical maps next to you. There's tons of places online that you can find free pdf printouts of the module's maps. Print them out and use a physical marker like a coin or something to mark their locations. it should cut down on the scrolling because keeping track of the map will be more smooth.
2. Cut out the random encounters. The module provides a d20 roll table for every 12 hours in the Citadel, with 1-6 resulting in a random encounter. Ignore that and just use the encounters that are actually planned in the module. The dungeon dive is enough of a grind as is.
3. Change it up when you feel it would make things flow better. It's your world, your players are just living in it. I'll tell you what I did as an example. My players approached the confrontation with with Grenl and the Durnn in an interesting way. They made a huge racket outside in the hallway in an attempt to lure any fighting goblins out into the hall and into an ambush. It worked like a charm, they killed all the goblins before even getting into the main goblin colony, and so they avoided the chaos of the goblin commoner stampede, instead frightening all the commoners and causing them to cower in the back room once they barged into the main hall with dead goblins heads on their swords. They quickly dispatched the Hobgoblins and went to go talk to the goblin chief into surrender. Now the module says that Durnn is unwilling to look weak, and at this point he had no leverage and all his forces were dead, so he was probably not going to be able to make a deal. The module also says that Grenl hate's Durnn and wants Belak gone. It came out in conversation that the party had killed all of the fighting goblins they had come across, so I decided that when Grenl heard this and saw that Durnn's hobgoblins were also dead, it was likely that she would turn on him to make a deal and avoid more bloodshed. She is her tribe's shaman, after all. I had her cast inflict wounds on Durnn (got lucky, rolled a natural 20, killed him in one shot), and had her throw herself at the mercy of the adventuring party, asking that they don't kill any more goblins and kill Belak. The party were more than happy to oblige, but they wanted assurances that no other goblins would attack them. I decided that Grennl would rip a small patch off of her clothes, and told the party that no other goblins would bother them if they showed the patch and dropped her name. This really streamlined the bottom of the Citadel which was good because the dungeon dive was really starting to drag on.
The moral of the story is feel free to improvise. The players have no idea what's going on behind your screen, and with any luck they haven't spoiled it for themselves by reading the module, so just do what you think makes for the best story.
Read it through and make some notes on what the highlights in each room are.
Also, take a look at the module and make the notes in the most likely order that you think the players are going to run into things. Modules often number the rooms for convenience of the module writer and not in the likely order that the rooms will be encountered .. so having a couple of notes on that can also be useful.
For the details, have the source material bookmarked so that you can flip to it quickly. This can make it much easier at times to use a hard copy rather than digital since they haven't perfected random and efficient access for digital documents in my experience :)
When I ran The Sunless Citadel for the first time, I changed a few things and it was great!
1: I changed Calcryx from a white dragon wyrmling to a pseudodragon. He communicates with a party member and tells them about being held captive by the kobolds. The party decided to free Calcryx completely and betray their earlier agreement with Yusdrayl, the kobold queen. Naturally, after leaving the Citadel, that gave me a villain for the PCs to encounter later down the road.
2: I made the Gulthias Tree fire-proof while it was still standing. The only way to destroy it was to chop it down, then the PCs could burn it. They were also able to save Sharwyn and Sir Bradford if they destroyed the tree; well...Sharwyn survived because she was incapacitated by Calcryx since he joined the party, but Sir Bradford was killed in the final showdown. The main reason they could live, even if the tree was destroyed, was that the party's cleric cast a bless spell on the tree before it was burnt, so I rewarded the party a little extra for that idea.
3: I love twig blights! They are quite aggravating and a nice change from the usual encounters like kobolds and goblins. If I had known about them at the time, I would have thrown in a few needle blights, maybe changing Belak's giant frog to a needle or vine blight.
Basically, I found that changing some elements made it more my own, so I had more of a personal interest in it. That way, I didn't feel so forced and wooden in my portrayal of the NPCs.
I sometimes feel the same, a couple of times I've apologized to the players and they've just looked back nonplussed. It wasn't an issue for them.
It's the same as a player having to react in the moment and needing to check their sheet. no one minds, there's allot to think about :). You're players want a fun story, they don't expect it to be told by a Bard.
Other than that folks are spot on, read over it. If you make a mistake with something keep a note of it so you can keep things consistent. If its really bad, then re-wind ( sometimes its much more fun to role with the punches though )
I'm relatively new to DMing and had read that Sunless Citadel was a good module for someone to start with. I did a practice run with two of my players beforehand with something I created myself and it was great but once I got to the module things sort of fell apart. I found myself reading straight from my screen, spent a lot of time scrolling back and forth to find which room they were in, and it just overall was very disjointed and not smooth. Does anyone have any tips on how to make things run a little better?
1. Read the module beforehand. No one expects you to remember everything by heart, but you should at least have some idea about what's in each room.
2. Boxed text is good, but don't read it verbatim. Read it, see what important details the players need to know about the room, and tell them that instead.
3. Take notes. If a trap forces the player to do a con save or 2d4 poison damage, make a note and write "CON, 2d4 pois". Just things you know you're going to need quickly
4. If you're using something like roll20, prepare the rooms beforehand. This one is probably obvious, but if you've already placed the tokens, you don't need to check every 5 seconds to see what enemies are there. If you do it with a physical map, have the tokens or minis sorted by which rooms they appear in.
"What do you mean I get disadvantage on persuasion?"
I don't know, Sneet, maybe because your argument is "Submit and become our pet"?
-Actual conversation in a game.
I just finished running this for my group of first time players, and it was my first time running a standard module from start to finish. My major piece of advice is don't be afraid of the choppiness. As SigrunNaryon said above, give it multiple reads. I think I skimmed it about 5 times and read it carefully 3 times, and it was still a little choppy, but as your players actually make their way through it'll get easier. Now for specific advice:
1. HAVE THE MAPS. If you're using roll20: follow the advice above. I was using roll20 and having the module pre-loaded and letting my characters move their own tokens was a HUGE help. If you're not, have physical maps next to you. There's tons of places online that you can find free pdf printouts of the module's maps. Print them out and use a physical marker like a coin or something to mark their locations. it should cut down on the scrolling because keeping track of the map will be more smooth.
2. Cut out the random encounters. The module provides a d20 roll table for every 12 hours in the Citadel, with 1-6 resulting in a random encounter. Ignore that and just use the encounters that are actually planned in the module. The dungeon dive is enough of a grind as is.
3. Change it up when you feel it would make things flow better. It's your world, your players are just living in it. I'll tell you what I did as an example. My players approached the confrontation with with Grenl and the Durnn in an interesting way. They made a huge racket outside in the hallway in an attempt to lure any fighting goblins out into the hall and into an ambush. It worked like a charm, they killed all the goblins before even getting into the main goblin colony, and so they avoided the chaos of the goblin commoner stampede, instead frightening all the commoners and causing them to cower in the back room once they barged into the main hall with dead goblins heads on their swords. They quickly dispatched the Hobgoblins and went to go talk to the goblin chief into surrender. Now the module says that Durnn is unwilling to look weak, and at this point he had no leverage and all his forces were dead, so he was probably not going to be able to make a deal. The module also says that Grenl hate's Durnn and wants Belak gone. It came out in conversation that the party had killed all of the fighting goblins they had come across, so I decided that when Grenl heard this and saw that Durnn's hobgoblins were also dead, it was likely that she would turn on him to make a deal and avoid more bloodshed. She is her tribe's shaman, after all. I had her cast inflict wounds on Durnn (got lucky, rolled a natural 20, killed him in one shot), and had her throw herself at the mercy of the adventuring party, asking that they don't kill any more goblins and kill Belak. The party were more than happy to oblige, but they wanted assurances that no other goblins would attack them. I decided that Grennl would rip a small patch off of her clothes, and told the party that no other goblins would bother them if they showed the patch and dropped her name. This really streamlined the bottom of the Citadel which was good because the dungeon dive was really starting to drag on.
The moral of the story is feel free to improvise. The players have no idea what's going on behind your screen, and with any luck they haven't spoiled it for themselves by reading the module, so just do what you think makes for the best story.
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
Read it through and make some notes on what the highlights in each room are.
Also, take a look at the module and make the notes in the most likely order that you think the players are going to run into things. Modules often number the rooms for convenience of the module writer and not in the likely order that the rooms will be encountered .. so having a couple of notes on that can also be useful.
For the details, have the source material bookmarked so that you can flip to it quickly. This can make it much easier at times to use a hard copy rather than digital since they haven't perfected random and efficient access for digital documents in my experience :)
When I ran The Sunless Citadel for the first time, I changed a few things and it was great!
1: I changed Calcryx from a white dragon wyrmling to a pseudodragon. He communicates with a party member and tells them about being held captive by the kobolds. The party decided to free Calcryx completely and betray their earlier agreement with Yusdrayl, the kobold queen. Naturally, after leaving the Citadel, that gave me a villain for the PCs to encounter later down the road.
2: I made the Gulthias Tree fire-proof while it was still standing. The only way to destroy it was to chop it down, then the PCs could burn it. They were also able to save Sharwyn and Sir Bradford if they destroyed the tree; well...Sharwyn survived because she was incapacitated by Calcryx since he joined the party, but Sir Bradford was killed in the final showdown. The main reason they could live, even if the tree was destroyed, was that the party's cleric cast a bless spell on the tree before it was burnt, so I rewarded the party a little extra for that idea.
3: I love twig blights! They are quite aggravating and a nice change from the usual encounters like kobolds and goblins. If I had known about them at the time, I would have thrown in a few needle blights, maybe changing Belak's giant frog to a needle or vine blight.
Basically, I found that changing some elements made it more my own, so I had more of a personal interest in it. That way, I didn't feel so forced and wooden in my portrayal of the NPCs.
I sometimes feel the same, a couple of times I've apologized to the players and they've just looked back nonplussed. It wasn't an issue for them.
It's the same as a player having to react in the moment and needing to check their sheet. no one minds, there's allot to think about :). You're players want a fun story, they don't expect it to be told by a Bard.
Other than that folks are spot on, read over it. If you make a mistake with something keep a note of it so you can keep things consistent. If its really bad, then re-wind ( sometimes its much more fun to role with the punches though )