So, I can't (I could I just don't want to) buy the stories so I make my make own. But I don't know if my stories are bad though! I kind of run out of ideas which is so werid because I'm a fantasy writer as my job. But I can't seem to make DnD storylines. I spend hours making maps,chosing pictures, getting charcter sheets set up, and planning all the scences and DCs. Only to feel bad about it. So my real question is what other things can happen other than have a wagon break down,fights,survie the nights, bar fights,trying to persuade people. I just want to make my players have fun.
I feel a large part of DMing is improvisation. What we can do to prepare ourselves is build a world for them to play in but having the background info makes it easy to do.
Start with a small town for them to begin their adventuring days in and answer some questions to fill it out. What type of people live here? Who is in charge of the town and what are his goals ? Is he good, evil or somewhere in between? Is there something happening out of the ordinary here? What can be done to fix the situation?
I'll try and answer these as an example if this isn't making any sense.
--------
Town: Roseberg
It's a small village about 5 miles inland of the main road. The people here are mostly human farmers and tradesmen. They are generally happy people, they live simple honest lives.
Aden is the leader of this village, he's in his 50s and is generally well respected. All he wants is to see the village flourish and grow.
Recently, livestock are disappearing from the fields without much of a trace but occasionally large pieces of them are left behind with lacerations and large spikes in them.
Aden fears some type of creature is preying on a major source of income for his village, he wants the adventures to investigate it.
-------
In this scenario I have a Manticore coming at nights and eating their livestock. The party would need to investigate remains, perhaps follow clues to the manticore's lair, interview farmers and field hands to see if they know anything. Track it down and kill or set up an ambush for it at night. It's up to the players to decide how to go about these things, not the DM. All you need to do is have the background info prepped. I just made this up on the spot, a nice little side mission that could potentially last for half a session or more depending on how long you play and how much your players engage in Role Play.
You can do many things like this and eventually apply the same logic on a larger scale. Create areas, Important NPC's along with their desires and motives and how those might conflict with other Important NPC's in your world.
I would suggest getting the monster manual at least, I like to read through it and get inspiration for stories. Like focusing a story arc around a specific creature.
The line is that you can't make people have fun, the players will have fun doing things that they want to do and we as DMs adapt to player decisions to keep the game rolling. An TLDR example from my own game right now, one of my players suffered from a long-term madness effect from reading from a evil artifact (a book) essentially. They couldn't pay for the healing spell on their own so they went to a major city and took a loan from some shady people. I didn't expect them to actually open the evil artifact so taking the loan from bad people was all improv and now the story is following them doing work for a shady organization to pay back the debt. I had this organization already created so it made it easy for me to use them to adapt to a problem the players created.
Sorry for the long-winded post, hopefully it's helpful. Test your stories with your players, that's the only way to find out if they're enjoyable for your players. Best of luck to you!
I totally get what you mean about not wanting to run premade stories, as I also struggle with that. My creativity just doesn't flow right when I have to follow a trail made by someone else, and I always end up way off track.
As far as inspiration, I usually try to have a plan that I can follow, but then improve the crap out of the session, and my players seem to enjoy it. I would recommend stop thinking about it like a writer and think about your session plans more like light outlines that you and the players fill in together. 90% of what my players have loved about sessions are things I came up with either on the spot or improved upon from my last session's improv.
What's worked best for me is that I always add results or consequences to anything they do. I also try to always surprise them and keep them on their toes. Sometimes that means giving them what they expect, sometimes it means throwing a curveball their way, but my players have been, by far, my best source of content. Build off of what they have done right or wrong, and you will find infinite inspiration. For example, one too many bar fights have just made them all wanted criminals, and now they have to be creative in how to get to town to persuade people, or instead of the wagon stopping suddenly because it broke down, maybe the donkey just suddenly gained intelligence and wants YOU to pull the cart for HIM now. Then follow those weird things up with reasons why. Maybe they are wanted criminals now because they beat up a city lord's son in a bar fight, but lo and behold, the son wants to become an adventurer now because he has seen how cool they are, but that doesn't make Father happy so he puts a bounty on your head. Now you have to convince this useless rich lordling that he shouldn't be an adventurer. Or the reason that previously stated intelligent donkey turned intelligent is that he is actually a polymorphed wizard that also managed to knock himself silly, but is slowly regaining his memory. Now the party has the option to help this potentially rich and powerful wizard regain his memory, human form, and place in society. Use the basics of Improv and build off of the characters reactions and THEN connect it to the story, and the players will end up cornering themselves.
Not sure if this helps, but it's worked out great for me, and my players tend to love the crap I pull out from thin air the most.
It is not actually that surprising, the interactivity between DM and other players, as well as the randomness of the dice make for a very different medium than books/films/tv. General consensus seems to be that the best approach for a game with a strong narrative/RP component is to build the region of the world that is immediately around the players and have some ideas for how to involve the PCs in what the NPCs are doing, fleshing out the wider world as the party approach the current boundaries. However maybe the players run off and do their own thing that you had never considered, there are times when the best solution will be to rearrange your plans to be in the players way regardless of what they do and other times where you are best off putting your ideas to one side and running with the players plans, so improvising and adapting are very important parts of being DM
And there are a huge range of things that could happen, last week my players leapt at an opportunity to stand in as stunt doubles for a traveling performance group. The theves guild is set up with a semi-legitimate business as a front and when the rogue wanted to join she had to prove her skills in some way(she was free to choose any approach she wanted). I also have a half baked side plot idea based on the party assisting in ensuring the next election runs smoothly. Pretty much anything going on in the world has the potential for players getting involved somehow.
Being a writer and being a DM is like comparing oranges to lemons, sure they're both citrus fruits, they may be about the same size, but they're not the same.
When you sit down to write a story, whether it be a short story, a full blown novel, or even a series, there is one thing that holds true: you are the only thing influencing what happens. If you want the protagonist to be like Goku, always growing stronger, defeat only makes for another tool to be gained for victory, death is just a new way to learn something, then you write that. If you want the Antagonist to be revealed as the protagonist at the end of the story, you write that. If you want the McGuffin to never leave the hands of a side character, it never does. You have control of every aspect of every thing in your story.
When you DM, you have control of almost nothing beyond the support characters. This is hard, it's annoying, and it's also very rewarding in its own way. Your plot, as well written as you can make it, won't survive the initial contact with the players. Your compelling verbal banter that you've scripted will be cut short by a player deciding to kill the npc because they were once betrayed by a creature just like this or, in some cases, they were just bored. All the work you put into the details of the port city that the players were headed to are scrapped because half way there the players heard you say, one time, in passing, that there was a cave to the north and that became more important. You can't write for your players, you have no control of them, and you will generally only get to show about half of what you've worked on. The rewarding part of all this is that you can, with your experience as a writer, get your players to engage with a living world rather than a boring module.
Write down a sketch of your plot, the bullet points of motive > actions to accomplish goal > success/failure states. Write down bullet points of each of your cities and important locations. Name, political structure, a few important npcs, any major events in that location, and any fluff that may be important. Only detail what is in the immediate vicinity of your players and, if you know for certain, the location they're heading to. Give 3-5 descriptive details about npcs, more if you know they'll be recurring people. Your players will give you a lot of material to work with as they table talk and muse about things in your presence, use it. In the end you start with a skeleton of the story then, as the players interact with things, flesh the details out as they are needed.
You don't have to worry about your players enjoying your games so much if everything they do feels like it impacts the story/world. If they feel like they're the driving force, they feel like their back stories are part of the world, and their actions have impact, you will give them something they'll enjoy. It's counter intuitive, but the less you try to control about the story, the more you'll be able to give them what they want. You put the key in the ignition but after that the players have the wheel, you're the one in charge of the accelerator. You are just as much a visitor to your own story as the players, but you are in charge of everything that the players see, hear, feel, smell, etc. The players are the ones who choose where the story goes. You can let this happen because you can slip the plot points in anywhere and the players will never be the wiser, as long as you only script the plot points, not the path.
I hope this helps, and remember: it's a game, don't stress it! Have fun and may the dice favor you.
So, I can't (I could I just don't want to) buy the stories so I make my make own. But I don't know if my stories are bad though! I kind of run out of ideas which is so werid because I'm a fantasy writer as my job. But I can't seem to make DnD storylines. I spend hours making maps,chosing pictures, getting charcter sheets set up, and planning all the scences and DCs. Only to feel bad about it. So my real question is what other things can happen other than have a wagon break down,fights,survie the nights, bar fights,trying to persuade people. I just want to make my players have fun.
Figure out the overarching plot first.
If you are sandboxing (players do whatever they want session to session), you're hamstringing yourself in terms of what plot ideas you can think of in advance. So put them on an 'Epic Quest'. For example:
Create an arch villain. Figure out what that arch villain's plan and motivation are. Figure out what NPCs are opposed to the villain. Figure out what the villain has done to achieve their goals already. All of this can be done in the same way you'd write a story, because the players aren't involved yet.
Then get the players involved. They stumble into this story somehow--they meet the arch villain and somewhat accidentally thwart an important plan. They are now on arch villain's s**t list. They learn about the arch villain, and now they have the overarching plot--Stop the Arch Villain.
From here, the way you go about plotting and planning is to play the arch villain. Don't plan out exactly what they'll do for the next 20 sessions. Figure out what they are doing now--trying to steal the Orb of World Destruction. Figure out what the plan is to do it. Then the players will need to learn about the plan, figure out how to stop it, etc. What the villain does next depends on whether the players succeed or not, right? And now, the individual sessions aren't so random. Your wagon breaks down, you get into a bar fight, etc. None of that is important. The next session involves the players breaking into the castle to steal the Orb first. Or they chose instead to head to the villain's lair and try to stop the villain there. So the things that happen will be plot-specific things, and the story will help you figure out what can/should happen.
Unless you're Robert Jordan, the goings-on in the middle of a Big Important Plot shouldn't be the minutia of wagons breaking down and such :) Having a big plot and thinking things through as the villain can help.
So, I can't (I could I just don't want to) buy the stories so I make my make own. But I don't know if my stories are bad though! I kind of run out of ideas which is so werid because I'm a fantasy writer as my job. But I can't seem to make DnD storylines. I spend hours making maps,chosing pictures, getting charcter sheets set up, and planning all the scences and DCs. Only to feel bad about it. So my real question is what other things can happen other than have a wagon break down,fights,survie the nights, bar fights,trying to persuade people. I just want to make my players have fun.
I feel a large part of DMing is improvisation. What we can do to prepare ourselves is build a world for them to play in but having the background info makes it easy to do.
Start with a small town for them to begin their adventuring days in and answer some questions to fill it out. What type of people live here? Who is in charge of the town and what are his goals ? Is he good, evil or somewhere in between? Is there something happening out of the ordinary here? What can be done to fix the situation?
I'll try and answer these as an example if this isn't making any sense.
--------
Town: Roseberg
It's a small village about 5 miles inland of the main road. The people here are mostly human farmers and tradesmen. They are generally happy people, they live simple honest lives.
Aden is the leader of this village, he's in his 50s and is generally well respected. All he wants is to see the village flourish and grow.
Recently, livestock are disappearing from the fields without much of a trace but occasionally large pieces of them are left behind with lacerations and large spikes in them.
Aden fears some type of creature is preying on a major source of income for his village, he wants the adventures to investigate it.
-------
In this scenario I have a Manticore coming at nights and eating their livestock. The party would need to investigate remains, perhaps follow clues to the manticore's lair, interview farmers and field hands to see if they know anything. Track it down and kill or set up an ambush for it at night. It's up to the players to decide how to go about these things, not the DM. All you need to do is have the background info prepped. I just made this up on the spot, a nice little side mission that could potentially last for half a session or more depending on how long you play and how much your players engage in Role Play.
You can do many things like this and eventually apply the same logic on a larger scale. Create areas, Important NPC's along with their desires and motives and how those might conflict with other Important NPC's in your world.
I would suggest getting the monster manual at least, I like to read through it and get inspiration for stories. Like focusing a story arc around a specific creature.
The line is that you can't make people have fun, the players will have fun doing things that they want to do and we as DMs adapt to player decisions to keep the game rolling. An TLDR example from my own game right now, one of my players suffered from a long-term madness effect from reading from a evil artifact (a book) essentially. They couldn't pay for the healing spell on their own so they went to a major city and took a loan from some shady people. I didn't expect them to actually open the evil artifact so taking the loan from bad people was all improv and now the story is following them doing work for a shady organization to pay back the debt. I had this organization already created so it made it easy for me to use them to adapt to a problem the players created.
Sorry for the long-winded post, hopefully it's helpful. Test your stories with your players, that's the only way to find out if they're enjoyable for your players. Best of luck to you!
DM of Amnian Nights: The Blackmore Saga
Homebrew Listings: A Fine Mustache (Magic Item), Icicle (magic item), Malice (magic item), Restore Undead (spell), Hex Bolt (spell), Healing Salve (consumable)
Hey Rosekaden,
I totally get what you mean about not wanting to run premade stories, as I also struggle with that. My creativity just doesn't flow right when I have to follow a trail made by someone else, and I always end up way off track.
As far as inspiration, I usually try to have a plan that I can follow, but then improve the crap out of the session, and my players seem to enjoy it. I would recommend stop thinking about it like a writer and think about your session plans more like light outlines that you and the players fill in together. 90% of what my players have loved about sessions are things I came up with either on the spot or improved upon from my last session's improv.
What's worked best for me is that I always add results or consequences to anything they do. I also try to always surprise them and keep them on their toes. Sometimes that means giving them what they expect, sometimes it means throwing a curveball their way, but my players have been, by far, my best source of content. Build off of what they have done right or wrong, and you will find infinite inspiration. For example, one too many bar fights have just made them all wanted criminals, and now they have to be creative in how to get to town to persuade people, or instead of the wagon stopping suddenly because it broke down, maybe the donkey just suddenly gained intelligence and wants YOU to pull the cart for HIM now. Then follow those weird things up with reasons why. Maybe they are wanted criminals now because they beat up a city lord's son in a bar fight, but lo and behold, the son wants to become an adventurer now because he has seen how cool they are, but that doesn't make Father happy so he puts a bounty on your head. Now you have to convince this useless rich lordling that he shouldn't be an adventurer. Or the reason that previously stated intelligent donkey turned intelligent is that he is actually a polymorphed wizard that also managed to knock himself silly, but is slowly regaining his memory. Now the party has the option to help this potentially rich and powerful wizard regain his memory, human form, and place in society. Use the basics of Improv and build off of the characters reactions and THEN connect it to the story, and the players will end up cornering themselves.
Not sure if this helps, but it's worked out great for me, and my players tend to love the crap I pull out from thin air the most.
Good luck!
The Chimerical Cookie
It is not actually that surprising, the interactivity between DM and other players, as well as the randomness of the dice make for a very different medium than books/films/tv. General consensus seems to be that the best approach for a game with a strong narrative/RP component is to build the region of the world that is immediately around the players and have some ideas for how to involve the PCs in what the NPCs are doing, fleshing out the wider world as the party approach the current boundaries. However maybe the players run off and do their own thing that you had never considered, there are times when the best solution will be to rearrange your plans to be in the players way regardless of what they do and other times where you are best off putting your ideas to one side and running with the players plans, so improvising and adapting are very important parts of being DM
And there are a huge range of things that could happen, last week my players leapt at an opportunity to stand in as stunt doubles for a traveling performance group. The theves guild is set up with a semi-legitimate business as a front and when the rogue wanted to join she had to prove her skills in some way(she was free to choose any approach she wanted). I also have a half baked side plot idea based on the party assisting in ensuring the next election runs smoothly. Pretty much anything going on in the world has the potential for players getting involved somehow.
Being a writer and being a DM is like comparing oranges to lemons, sure they're both citrus fruits, they may be about the same size, but they're not the same.
When you sit down to write a story, whether it be a short story, a full blown novel, or even a series, there is one thing that holds true: you are the only thing influencing what happens. If you want the protagonist to be like Goku, always growing stronger, defeat only makes for another tool to be gained for victory, death is just a new way to learn something, then you write that. If you want the Antagonist to be revealed as the protagonist at the end of the story, you write that. If you want the McGuffin to never leave the hands of a side character, it never does. You have control of every aspect of every thing in your story.
When you DM, you have control of almost nothing beyond the support characters. This is hard, it's annoying, and it's also very rewarding in its own way. Your plot, as well written as you can make it, won't survive the initial contact with the players. Your compelling verbal banter that you've scripted will be cut short by a player deciding to kill the npc because they were once betrayed by a creature just like this or, in some cases, they were just bored. All the work you put into the details of the port city that the players were headed to are scrapped because half way there the players heard you say, one time, in passing, that there was a cave to the north and that became more important. You can't write for your players, you have no control of them, and you will generally only get to show about half of what you've worked on. The rewarding part of all this is that you can, with your experience as a writer, get your players to engage with a living world rather than a boring module.
Write down a sketch of your plot, the bullet points of motive > actions to accomplish goal > success/failure states. Write down bullet points of each of your cities and important locations. Name, political structure, a few important npcs, any major events in that location, and any fluff that may be important. Only detail what is in the immediate vicinity of your players and, if you know for certain, the location they're heading to. Give 3-5 descriptive details about npcs, more if you know they'll be recurring people. Your players will give you a lot of material to work with as they table talk and muse about things in your presence, use it. In the end you start with a skeleton of the story then, as the players interact with things, flesh the details out as they are needed.
You don't have to worry about your players enjoying your games so much if everything they do feels like it impacts the story/world. If they feel like they're the driving force, they feel like their back stories are part of the world, and their actions have impact, you will give them something they'll enjoy. It's counter intuitive, but the less you try to control about the story, the more you'll be able to give them what they want. You put the key in the ignition but after that the players have the wheel, you're the one in charge of the accelerator. You are just as much a visitor to your own story as the players, but you are in charge of everything that the players see, hear, feel, smell, etc. The players are the ones who choose where the story goes. You can let this happen because you can slip the plot points in anywhere and the players will never be the wiser, as long as you only script the plot points, not the path.
I hope this helps, and remember: it's a game, don't stress it! Have fun and may the dice favor you.
Figure out the overarching plot first.
If you are sandboxing (players do whatever they want session to session), you're hamstringing yourself in terms of what plot ideas you can think of in advance. So put them on an 'Epic Quest'. For example:
Create an arch villain. Figure out what that arch villain's plan and motivation are. Figure out what NPCs are opposed to the villain. Figure out what the villain has done to achieve their goals already. All of this can be done in the same way you'd write a story, because the players aren't involved yet.
Then get the players involved. They stumble into this story somehow--they meet the arch villain and somewhat accidentally thwart an important plan. They are now on arch villain's s**t list. They learn about the arch villain, and now they have the overarching plot--Stop the Arch Villain.
From here, the way you go about plotting and planning is to play the arch villain. Don't plan out exactly what they'll do for the next 20 sessions. Figure out what they are doing now--trying to steal the Orb of World Destruction. Figure out what the plan is to do it. Then the players will need to learn about the plan, figure out how to stop it, etc. What the villain does next depends on whether the players succeed or not, right? And now, the individual sessions aren't so random. Your wagon breaks down, you get into a bar fight, etc. None of that is important. The next session involves the players breaking into the castle to steal the Orb first. Or they chose instead to head to the villain's lair and try to stop the villain there. So the things that happen will be plot-specific things, and the story will help you figure out what can/should happen.
Unless you're Robert Jordan, the goings-on in the middle of a Big Important Plot shouldn't be the minutia of wagons breaking down and such :) Having a big plot and thinking things through as the villain can help.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)