My younger brother wants to try to DM. I would be happy to teach him, but I don't really know how. Are there any good adventures (other than LMoP, OotA, Pota) that we could use? Any other ideas?
You could just throw together a quick dungeon and stock it, and walk him through the process. I’m not sure you need to use a published adventure. That being said, I’m new to DMing and I’m running LMoP. I do like that they stop and explain a bunch of things about traps, NPC interactions, etc. But having a real live person there is probably better than those little blocks of text. It’s really cool that you’re willing to teach your brother, it’s amazing how much more you learn about the game when you become a DM!
My younger brother wants to try to DM. I would be happy to teach him, but I don't really know how. Are there any good adventures (other than LMoP, OotA, Pota) that we could use? Any other ideas?
If you want him to just get his feet wet and run a short little thing to get his rhythm, watch/have him watch the first few episodes of Matt Colville's Running the Game and run the Delian Tomb scenario. It has a little of everything that is the essence of D&D.
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
My younger brother wants to try to DM. I would be happy to teach him, but I don't really know how. Are there any good adventures (other than LMoP, OotA, Pota) that we could use? Any other ideas?
I would recommend this dungeon I created myself. It is decently easy to run and its free.
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
There are a number of free beginner dungeons on DMSGuild or Drivethrurpg. Any of those might work, though you'd probably want to check them out yourself first. Quality can vary big time on some of those.
One suggestion I'd have is to let him run a session or two with just you and maybe one other person as the players if that's viable. One of the possibly toughest things to master as a DM is being able to improvise when players go off the rails, and in my experience that happens a LOT. So if you and perhaps one other person play when he runs his first few sessions and sort of "gently" do that here and there, you can give him some idea of how to deal with that kind of situation. We had one player in an old group of mine that wanted to try DMing. She did a great job with the adventure as planned, but if any of us deviated from the "rails" of the adventure the least bit, she was totally lost trying to wing it. I think if she'd had some "prep" sessions before running for the whole group, she'd have been a lot better at it.
I'd also suggest explaining to him to not get too worried about remembering every little rule. If he can't remember something specifically and makes a "table call" that's not totally correct, it's not the end of the world, as long as its fair and he stays consistent with the same ruling for that session at least.
If none of the published 5E adventures are what you're looking for, I'd suggest some of the Pathfinder adventure paths. You'll of course have to convert the stats of critters and NPCs and magic items, but they actually do a really good job of laying out the adventures and considering a ton of different angles as far as what the party might do. I have a bunch of adventure paths that I'm planning on converting to 5E as Pathfinder's system bloat got on my nerves. I didn't like 4E D&D, so that's why I went to Pathfinder, but the system bloat there sent me back to 5E since it's much more streamlined. That being said, if you set aside the rules (in my opinion) some of the adventure paths make for great campaigns and some of them (Rise of the Runelords in particular since it was their first one) throw in a lot of good tips for beginning DMs.
Oh, another idea. From what I've seen, the published DM screens for 5E are pretty good. But if your brother would be interested in tables/info they don't list, you might consider picking up one of those customizable ones and print out the info he wants as inserts and put them in there. As he gets more experience under his belt, he'll be able to remember more and more rules off the top of his head, but to start off with, he might like to have more info handy on the spot in front of him while running.
My younger brother wants to try to DM. I would be happy to teach him, but I don't really know how. Are there any good adventures (other than LMoP, OotA, Pota) that we could use? Any other ideas?
You could just throw together a quick dungeon and stock it, and walk him through the process. I’m not sure you need to use a published adventure. That being said, I’m new to DMing and I’m running LMoP. I do like that they stop and explain a bunch of things about traps, NPC interactions, etc. But having a real live person there is probably better than those little blocks of text. It’s really cool that you’re willing to teach your brother, it’s amazing how much more you learn about the game when you become a DM!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
I would recommend this dungeon I created myself. It is decently easy to run and its free.
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/206805/Shrine-of-the-Night-Serpent?term=Shrine of the Night Serpent&test_epoch=0
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
I would recommend this dungeon I created myself. It is decently easy to run and its free.
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/206805/Shrine-of-the-Night-Serpent?term=Shrine of the Night Serpent&test_epoch=0
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
There are a number of free beginner dungeons on DMSGuild or Drivethrurpg. Any of those might work, though you'd probably want to check them out yourself first. Quality can vary big time on some of those.
One suggestion I'd have is to let him run a session or two with just you and maybe one other person as the players if that's viable. One of the possibly toughest things to master as a DM is being able to improvise when players go off the rails, and in my experience that happens a LOT. So if you and perhaps one other person play when he runs his first few sessions and sort of "gently" do that here and there, you can give him some idea of how to deal with that kind of situation. We had one player in an old group of mine that wanted to try DMing. She did a great job with the adventure as planned, but if any of us deviated from the "rails" of the adventure the least bit, she was totally lost trying to wing it. I think if she'd had some "prep" sessions before running for the whole group, she'd have been a lot better at it.
I'd also suggest explaining to him to not get too worried about remembering every little rule. If he can't remember something specifically and makes a "table call" that's not totally correct, it's not the end of the world, as long as its fair and he stays consistent with the same ruling for that session at least.
If none of the published 5E adventures are what you're looking for, I'd suggest some of the Pathfinder adventure paths. You'll of course have to convert the stats of critters and NPCs and magic items, but they actually do a really good job of laying out the adventures and considering a ton of different angles as far as what the party might do. I have a bunch of adventure paths that I'm planning on converting to 5E as Pathfinder's system bloat got on my nerves. I didn't like 4E D&D, so that's why I went to Pathfinder, but the system bloat there sent me back to 5E since it's much more streamlined. That being said, if you set aside the rules (in my opinion) some of the adventure paths make for great campaigns and some of them (Rise of the Runelords in particular since it was their first one) throw in a lot of good tips for beginning DMs.
Oh, another idea. From what I've seen, the published DM screens for 5E are pretty good. But if your brother would be interested in tables/info they don't list, you might consider picking up one of those customizable ones and print out the info he wants as inserts and put them in there. As he gets more experience under his belt, he'll be able to remember more and more rules off the top of his head, but to start off with, he might like to have more info handy on the spot in front of him while running.