I’m a new DM and would like tips, pointers, and assistance with my approach to campaign/long-term planning.
My problem is balancing detail vs. railroading. The more detail I make, the more I feel like I railroad my party. On the other hand, having no detail makes the whole world feel lifeless and dry.
I want to hear criticisms for areas I can improve (with suggestions as to how I can improve them). Links and direct messages to similar queries are welcome. If I violate terms, feel free to inform/ban/demolish as you see fit.
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I would like to start by saying that I am a new DM.I’ve only played/run 5th edition with one group of friends, and only then for about 20 total (4-6 hr) sessions over one year.
Additionally, I was a player for a few sessions before that (one of my current players introduced me to the game as a player for the sole purpose of trying to get me to DM for him, as he wanted to be a PC and did not have anyone to DM for him).
While a player, I disliked the following when it happened to me:
Simple combat encounters: 1-2 monsters, 30-60’ away, run straight at you and attack-No reasons, no motive, no mystery,no connection to any plot, just a bag of HP and XP to be killed
Map-building: the DM having to take time to draw maps in front of us and/or build terrain. Don’t get me wrong: when the battlefield has three different tiers of height using cereal boxes, there is half-cover from pencils, a shrine to an evil god of a toy pokemon held in place by binder clips...I like the RESULT, but not the 30-45 minutes required to plan and build it on the table.
Nebulous NPCs: villagers and townspeople with “reactive” personalities- they have a few bits of information to give you, then try to leave ASAP (because their purpose is done and there’s nothing more to them).
Lack of terrain features: you can tell the difference between the objects we were “meant” to find and the random dice roll features-
“You go North and find a dangerous forest, after 8 hours of pathfinding, you come across the corpse of a ranger with a backpack full of furs he was planning to sell” VS
“You go East and the sky darkens. The obsidian spire of Drakkar Noir rises in the distance, like a black rapier attempting to pierce the very heavens. A sense of dread clings to you as a light rain begins to pour on your beleaguered companions. In the distance, you can make out several watch fires with small figures occasionally passing back and forth: clearly some kind of perimeter meant to keep out meddlers just like yourselves. The headquarters of the Evil Band of Channell stands in the distance, ready to test your skill and courage. How will you meet them?”
Constant look-ups: “You wanted a beer from the tavern? How much was that again? Do you need to make a con save against the alcohol? What’s the DC?” And “Sure, you can hire a carriage rather than walk to the next town...how does that work, again?” OR “You cast Tasha’s? Ok, what’s the save? What happens on a fail? What exactly can an “incapacitated” creature do? Can he resist a grapple attempt?”
While these are things that I really enjoyed:
Villains who twirl their mustaches and use terrain, traps, and henchmen intelligently
Fully fleshed-out NPCs which had motives, fears, dreams, drama, and maybe a funny accent
Locations with as much personality as the NPCs
Connections to PC background, especially custom ones
Fast, smooth transactions with money, Magic, and other rule details
This probably sounds like a rant against my DM. I assure you that is not my intent. I simply wish to lay the groundwork for my query. My flaws and ideals, if you will.
Now, the common theme in my likes and dislikes comes down to DM preparation: the more that was planned out and written down before the session, the less that has to be made up on the fly. However, the amount of work the DM has to do can spin out of control quite rapidly, as I’m discovering.
Please know that I do not have the background knowledge or experience to generate anything “on the fly.” Whenever my players take actions, talk to people, or go to places that I had not fully planned out, I get very uncomfortable: All the NPCs begin to sound the same and (in my opinion) lack the color of fully fleshed-out characters. The terrain loses detail. The monsters get dumber and lack the tactics I like to employ. We lose connection to any over-arching story, plot, or themes.
All these things happen because I’m working as frantically as possible, minute-by-minute, to generate something, anything that I can put in my players’ path. I’ll use a random table to generate the terrain, NPCs, and monsters, but I haven’t been playing D&D for the 30 years necessary to know that White Dragons are territorial animals while Green Dragons are smooth-talking evil manipulators. I’ve got a stat black and a dream, and I’m panicking every time.
I currently feel like there are two extremes of planning, and I am attempting to find a happy space between. Neither extreme is, in my opinion, acceptable:
Approach #1: Plan the Day Only
In this method, I approach the upcoming session by “filling the time.”Create 8 hours of content, to be sure that you don’t run out. In this method, use pallet-swapping, Quantum Ogres, and other DM slide-of-hand to have the party follow your script.
I consider this railroading the party, even if I do my best to hide it. However, the benefit is that it minimizes the prep work the DM has to do, as no prep work is thrown away because the party avoided it. It also avoids the panicked “on-the-fly” generation which I am so bad at.
Fully flesh out some NPCs based on their purpose: motivation, rescue, antagonism, roleplay, shopping, etc. Have them “in stock” and ready to pull. Wherever the party goes, the ‘correct’ NPC meets them.
Have rich, detailed layouts of locations. No matter what direction the party goes in, they eventually encounter the locations you want them to, with pallet-swapped changes: those ruins with the treasure might be either deep in the forest, covered in vines or high in the mountains, covered in ice. Both are correct.
Create one or two combat encounters: include ways for PCs to avoid combat if they choose to avoid it in at least one (but not both) to make sure you fill the time. Pre-make maps filled with terrain variation: trees to climb, walls with cover, traps to navigate/avoid, different heights, objects which can help the PCs if they decide to use them, non-combat NPCs to protect, evacuate, or chase off, etc. All the details of a varied encounter tailored to the PCs: some enemies they will excel against with some they will struggle to overcome.
You probably get the idea. I’ve done this before, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Approach #2 Create the Planet
This is the ideal, impossible approach I wish I could do: create an entire world, rich with detail and endless chances for interaction, mundane or otherwise.
Using a hex map, draw a circle representing the greatest distance the party could travel in 1-3 days. Fill every single hex with terrain, creatures, possible treasure, and events/opportunities for the party to interact with (or not) as they choose.
If you create a village with a population, flesh out details about as many of those people as possible: personalities, goals, dreams, families, and problems. Each and every one should have a list: how do they greet the party under friendly/unfriendly terms? how do they react to earnest aid? How do they react to violence? Offers to pay them? Offers of seduction? Threats to steal from them? Do they have a prejudice against some of the PC races? How does this prejudice manifest?
Most of the people should be commoners, but they should still be people. They should “feel” like people and react like people. Some should be happy and need nothing from adventurers, while others might be desperate for aid for something that the party could easily do (Oh! Thank the gods! A cleric of Helm! Please cure my son of this disease he caught from a rat bite), and still others have needs which require a significant undertaking.
The village should have a sensible economy: a agrarian village should have a tool-maker, some traders waiting to buy and export excess grain to a nearby ever-hungry city/town, nearby hunters to earn a living with bartering furs and selling meat, and other sensible inclusions. Such a village shouldn’t have, for example, a mysterious wizard who sells magical oddities unless there is a reason for him to be there (nearby ruins to study, perhaps).
A few places in a few different locations have the “hooks” for the overall storyline (NPCs, clues, or other ways in), but they are passive. The party can find them (or not) as they go naturally.
All locations within your hypothetical travel distance should have events which occur naturally, whether the PCs are there or not. If you have large predators in the forest, what do they eat when they can’t find an elf ranger? If there are a group of bandits on the highway and the party doesn’t encounter them because they traveled cross-country, do the bandits move on, wait, or attack the nearby village at night?
I hope that I have conveyed the picture of my ideal by now. I wish I could create a living, breathing world for every session. One where, even if the PCs say in camp and talked in-character for a 4 hour session, the world would continue to move and live without them, for better or worse.
The big drawbacks of this are time, waste, and organization.
Another “drawback” is predictability, because I’ve heard that some DMs like to “discover” their content at the same time as their players using random tables to generate everything from the terrain to the creatures. Such a concept terrifies me: howam I supposed to tell my party a story I don’t know yet?
I actually did something like this for one session when we didn’t meet for six straight weeks. I just kept making more and more and more detail for the nearby forest, mountain, and village the party was near at the end of the last session (they went to the village). The amount of paper I had created was cumbersome and difficult to organize, but every NPC the party met had a picture, at least some personality, lines I had practiced, a reason to be there, some history, something they needed the party to do (or not do), and so on.
I felt it was one of my best sessions, but honest feedback is difficult to come by. Maybe it was my worst? Maybe they felt railroaded because I seemed so ready for everything they did? I’ll never know.
However, I never got to use any material I had prepared for the mountain or the forest. I re-purposed some of it, but that’s more prep work and time. I have a job and family, so I can’t afford to put that much prep into weekly or bi-weekly sessions.
All this finally brings me back to my original question. How can I approach planning sessions which balance the following:
Access to an overarching story without railroading
Having many NPCs with memorable traits that don’t all merge into the same accent and behavior (Nurse Joy/Officer Jenny effect)
Immersive detail for the world the PCs are in without an overwhelming time investment requirement
Interesting encounters for the party that include terrain opportunities, compelling villains, options for non-violent resolutions, and connections to the surrounding world while avoiding wasted prep work and the Quantum Ogre effect.
Please remember that I am terrible at “on-the-fly” creation. If you come to my village and demand to meet the herbalist, and I didn’t make one prior, be ready for the driest, most emotionless automaton shopkeeper you’ve ever heard: All business, no love, buy your shit and get out. It’s not that I don’t want you to ask for an herbalist, it’s just that I get tons of details going in my head at once, and they just kind of cancel themselves out in the execution.
I have no idea how I can “get gud” at making stuff up on the spot.
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Thank you for reading my post. I hope that you can help me create an enjoyable new campaign for my friends.
One of the most important things I can recommend (it is my personal rule that this is mandatory) is a Session 0. What are your players expectations and what are your expectations for playing DnD. It appears you have an incredibly detailed list of "Do's and Don't's" described above that you would like to implement for your campaign. Does this jive with what your players want? Remember, both you and the players need to have fun. The following link has an interesting "check-list" for a Session 0:
He likes, similar to what I am interpreting you prefer, a more sandbox approach to campaigns.
The final piece of advice, related to "how to get good at making stuff up on the spot", is to start your new PCs off with a really good pre-build adventure: Lost Mines of Phandelver. Running your PCs through this will allow you to get a taste for their playstyle, and it will help flesh out your personal experience level DM'ing. That, and it will get them up to about 5th level, ready to be thrust on the larger world around them, to tackle larger and more world shaking dilemas.
There are many other excellent DM's on this forum, so keep coming back here to get different perspectives on our DM'ing experiences (Reddit and youTube also have many good resources).
Most importantly of all, have fun gaming with your PCs and yourself!
The Matt Colville advice above is tops. Really worth the time.
Otherwise, more general tips: I typically plan for one more encounter than I think I'll need, just in case things go more smoothly than I anticipate.
If you don't like just bags of xp (me neither), then don't use random encounters.
If there is a big choice about what to do next (e.g. do we take the south road or the east road or just stay here in town?), always have the players make it at the end of the session. There's a bit of a social contract in them sticking to it, but generally, it leaves you only having to prepare for one scenario, so you can put more depth into what you do.
Don't overprepare. and you'll know what that means for your group. Are they going to sit down and RP a half-hour talk with the innkeeper? then its good to have a lot of backstory for him. Are they just going to say, I go out drinking and handwave the details? Then you don't even need a name for the innkeeper.
Keep a list of names pre-generated, in case you need one for someone you thought was going to be random and unused.
Let your players help you build the world. If they are from some village halfway around the world, tell them to write up a bit about it. A member of a knightly order, tell them to write up the order. It helps them get invested in the world, and takes some things off of your plate.
Players need to know their own characters. They should know if a spell needs an attack roll or a save, and what their save DC is, and all those bits and pieces. f you can understand how every monster in the world attacks, they can spend the time to know their own character.
Thank you for your replies. I will certainly be looking at those links shortly.
We just finished LMoP, and I think we’ve enjoyed it. My current plan is to try HotDQ with them
That being said, I plan to allow them to choose whether or not to go along with HotDQ in game. They might ignore the plight of the town or even join the cult of the dragon. I honestly don’t know, but I want to be ready for big twists like that.
As we went through LMoP, I got more and more comfortable adding elements and additional bits, so they got more XP as a result - the short version is that Glasstaff became a powerful, recurring villain who kept Dimension Door-ing away until the final showdown inside Wave Echo Cave.
After I was finished, I asked for a break for a while. My friend agreed to DM for a few months, and we’re currently playing through his Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.
I wanted to look back and critique myself, and I feel that I railroaded my party with LMoP.
The wake-up call was this:
The party is inside the cave, having just vanquished Glasstaff, but not yet having encountered the Black Spider. I suggest that Their characters are pretty tired, and that it might be wise to find a safe place from monsters for a short or long rest.
While looking for such a room, they encounter some more wandering undead. Two “pirate” themed characters, B and K, do not rush forward as usual, and hang back uncharacteristically, using javelins and other ranged attacks. Once the rest of the party was committed, they shouted “Captain’s Orders!” and proceed to betray the party, claiming that they were tired of the Bard’s jokes and sharing the loot.
The Bard, wounded and trapped, started casting Thunderwave and Shatter every turn he could to attract everything he could. This brought in the Black Spider and led to a TPK.
The players B and K laughed off the betrayal and the deaths of their characters, and everyone is pretty much over the drama at this point.However, I blame myself for it.
Had I not railroaded them, and engaged them more in the game they wanted to play, they wouldn’t have upended the whole situation like that, right?
That’s the big reason that I asked for help here, today. I want to start fresh and do things right. I know I can’t always please everyone, but I’m going to try, anyway.
A session 0 is a good idea, and I will certainly implement it. Do you have other suggestions?
I think you have to let go of the whole “doing it right” mentality, the amount of work you are trying to put in combined with how focussed you are on doing it right you are just going to burn out.
so think about why you want to have a big detailed world? Do you have a story to tell? Is it a narrative path or emergent?
You have decided the only options is over prepared sandbox or railroading but there is a middle ground. You can have overarching themes, foreshadowing and narrative without it being railroading.
don’t worry so much about reacting to your players in the moment, think about reacting long term.
one of your players RP’s s moment where they tell the party their mother was eaten by an ancient white dragon called Smirnoff, you don’t have to throw away everything you did up-to that point and send them dragon hunting. But note it down and get back to it.
use the tools at your disposal trike the heroic chronicle and goals to generate plot points. But mostly talk to your players
That's not on you at all. Players betraying the rest of the party? Not on you. Others have suggested a session 0, and that could really help here. If those players were unhappy with the way things were going, they should have said something out of character, instead of acting like children and blowing everything up for everyone else.
Also, I'm not sure where you were railroading in the scenario you described. Suggesting they take a rest is being kind, not railroading. I guess, some railroading is inevitable when you used a published adventure, but it seems like you were breaking out of that a bit, which can be good. It really doesn't seem like you were forcing anything, or only allowing them one way to solve a problem, which is really what railroading is (my definition, anyway. others might say it better).
You can railroad them, the trick is not letting them know. If they expect you to have a fully fleshed out world stetting that you can have ready on the fly, then there are some problems. Often the session 0 style play will not have fixed those. However, the players may just be able to be told "Yes, you can join the Cult of the Dragon, but now I have about 2 months of work to generate content and you may not like how it goes." if they can handle that, you are good.
Making the railroading more subtle is somewhat easy, and gets easier as you do it more often.
Overall story arc says they need to confront the hag in the woods.
Offer 3 different ways to get there. This would amount to 3 different maps and maybe a couple of re-skinned encounters with very similar creatures. If you have time, make the encounter custom for the terrain. Can flesh out a few generic NPCs to help or guide them through getting to the encounter.
The hag controls them all so the clue they find at their encounter will lead them to a single location.
Make the start of the encounter with the hag have something relating to how they found the location.
You can even give them something special to help with the encounter based on how they got their. Players decide to go through the forest instead of along the road and they rescue a Dryad from orc bandits. The Dryad gives them a token to get past the entangling lair actions that the hag has. If they went by road, saving a merchant from human bandits will give them a consumable magic item that gives them advantage on 1 WIS save.
That adventure flow has branches along it but they all go to the same place. The players decision affect the outcome and how the encounter with the hag is dictated. They were railroaded on part of the adventure, but they had choices all along the way.
It's not really possible to avoid it taking a chunk of time to design an encounter (with map and all), but there's a simple trick to make it not bog the game down: embrace the cliffhanger. You can have simple fights at any point during a session, but if PCs are headed for some big complex thing, call the session (or for long sessions, call a break) and the actual fight occurs when they return. This lets you plan things out during downtime.
It's not really possible to avoid it taking a chunk of time to design an encounter (with map and all), but there's a simple trick to make it not bog the game down: embrace the cliffhanger. You can have simple fights at any point during a session, but if PCs are headed for some big complex thing, call the session (or for long sessions, call a break) and the actual fight occurs when they return. This lets you plan things out during downtime.
Have it like how computer games have to load. If they go off track badly and you need to correct it, just do as Pantagruel666 suggested and tell them have to stop and load the next level. The load time may be a 15 minutes or a few weeks, but that would give you breathing space.
Whatever you do, do not follow any advise that says "Here's how to railroad." You can have an over arching theme but player choice should still matter. If you present them with 3 options, but all those options end up at the same conclusion - you have taken away player agency and might as well have everyone sitting around a table while you talk for 4 hours a weekend. Yes, you can have story that the players follow and you can poke and prod, but please do not make it so what ever the players do, the content you made gets used. Part of being a DM is planning 12 encounters and the PCs only activating 1 of them. That's just how it goes!
The biggest thing to remember about Dnd is it is cooperative story telling. So you need to listens to the wants of the Players just as much as they need to listen to you. I highly recommend sitting down with the PCs and doing a Session 0. That can clear the air and you ca discuss things like "Look If you choose to go wildly off track, I won't have anything prepared." or even just seeing what these players want out of the week. Like why did those two PCs turn on the others? What was the actual reason?
So my view, as a relatively new DM, is that railroading depends on your players. If they're just there to have some fun, meet up with friends and save the world, as well as some RP and good storytelling along the way, then most players should be fine with the 'ok, you can do that, but bear in mind this' approach, even mid-session, as long as you're straight-up and honest with them, because if you allow the party to ignore all the plot hooks if they want to and do whatever they want, most of the time this just ends in a poor improvised session (you are not alone in not being great at improvising). If presenting the party with three options to do something that they want to do anyway is railroading, then things get very complicated very quickly. Session 0 is a good recommendation and one I definitely second/third, and I would also suggest having some stock NPC's and locations (with some variation) ready in case the players do something completely unexpected - Bob the innkeeper might seem fairly dull, but he's actually a very prosperous man who owns several bars and offers the party free drinks at each if they visit, while a different Bob could be a very profit-driven man who charges slightly above average prices, but gets away with it because his is the only respectable inn around. Also bear in mind that you don't have to know exactly what happens everywhere at once - just maybe have prepared two or three events that happened in the last week, some of which the party might never even find out about. Sadly, there is no shortcut to 'getting gud' at improvisation, that presumably comes with practice.
My working elements in a campaign are hooks that involve the PCs personally, triggers, consequences and an overarching plot.
With these parts you can lead the game wherever the players are going, but if they do not follow the hooks or they avoid specific trigger events, then there are consequences in the game world, leading to events, that can hook the players in again, in a different way.
Saying this, my overall arcs are typically heavy changes to the world.
Not to add even more conflicting advice to the thread but I don’t agree with some of the things that are being said. Not all rail reading is bad, not all player follow through is good, and not all plot is railroading.
yes it’s co-operative story telling but you are part of that co-op not its admin. While you are not player in the game you are part of it and that has to be worthwhile for you. If you are preparing 12 things and using 1 that is not “the cost of DMing” that is an exercise in burnout.
What’s important is that your players don’t feel forced into anything, that it seems a natural progression, the 3 choices that lead to one place is not bad. They choose the journey, you the destination. They are only playing it once, they don’t need to see the sticky tape holding it together.
uour players will not care how much time you spent plotting out every single hex on a map if the encounters end up boring. And they won’t care you have a set path if it’s an interesting and exciting one.
don’t burn yourself out trying to make 15 balanced encounters, make 3 good ones with 3 ways they can be approached. That’s 6 less encounters
Not to add even more conflicting advice to the thread but I don’t agree with some of the things that are being said. Not all rail reading is bad, not all player follow through is good, and not all plot is railroading.
yes it’s co-operative story telling but you are part of that co-op not its admin. While you are not player in the game you are part of it and that has to be worthwhile for you. If you are preparing 12 things and using 1 that is not “the cost of DMing” that is an exercise in burnout.
What’s important is that your players don’t feel forced into anything, that it seems a natural progression, the 3 choices that lead to one place is not bad. They choose the journey, you the destination. They are only playing it once, they don’t need to see the sticky tape holding it together.
uour players will not care how much time you spent plotting out every single hex on a map if the encounters end up boring. And they won’t care you have a set path if it’s an interesting and exciting one.
don’t burn yourself out trying to make 15 balanced encounters, make 3 good ones with 3 ways they can be approached. That’s 6 less encounters
Agreed. If you do not stop the players from making decisions, and you steer the decision making back to the plot and the destination, while the players feel their decisions shape the story, you are doing a good job as a DM. No one needs 12+ prepared options, even if the PCs are doing the sandbox thing and go wherever they want. As a DM you can use events and encounters to influence what the players want.
I'll just say this - If in a dungeon there are two paths and I as a player am told to pick one - yet in the end they end up at the same encounter. Why am I even given a choice then? That is a major issue and I completely disagree that that "okay because the journey." Now if you mean that traveling from one continent to another has multiple paths that end in the same end point, of course the end point was decided prior to the trip. But don't make player choice 100% not matter because "Well i made this encounter and I want it used." Like I said if you need to use everything you make as a DM - then don't play simply tell the PCs what happens.
I disagree that "railroading is good so long as the players feel like they had a choice" - because that means lying to you friends and players and breaking a social contract. Now if during a session 0 you all agree that the DM can at any point override player choice then that's fine. However the players agreed to that verbally, and that's the biggest thing. I'll reiterate you and the players need to sit down and discuss what you want from the game.
I'll just say this - If in a dungeon there are two paths and I as a player am told to pick one - yet in the end they end up at the same encounter. Why am I even given a choice then? That is a major issue and I completely disagree that that "okay because the journey." Now if you mean that traveling from one continent to another has multiple paths that end in the same end point, of course the end point was decided prior to the trip. But don't make player choice 100% not matter because "Well i made this encounter and I want it used." Like I said if you need to use everything you make as a DM - then don't play simply tell the PCs what happens.
I disagree that "railroading is good so long as the players feel like they had a choice" - because that means lying to you friends and players and breaking a social contract. Now if during a session 0 you all agree that the DM can at any point override player choice then that's fine. However the players agreed to that verbally, and that's the biggest thing. I'll reiterate you and the players need to sit down and discuss what you want from the game.
I think the illusion of choice is a valid way to make everyone happy; the players feel like they have agency (which is what matters, the experience of the game) and the DM can make more efficient use of their time and energy preparing content that will be used, rather than twice as much with half being discarded.
Creating an illusion of choice is no more lying than any other conceit of the game to make the DMs like easier is lying. The DM keeps secrets from the players, that's the nature of the game, and sometimes that secret is "no matter which road you took, the encounter would be the same".
Ultimately if the players don't know, it doesn't matter as long as they had fun.
I'll just say this - If in a dungeon there are two paths and I as a player am told to pick one - yet in the end they end up at the same encounter.
I think it comes down to scale a bit. If the premises is that they need to kill the big bad, all decision are going to end up leading to fighting the big bad, so it is just the journey is different. Unless you are happy for them to change the overarching plot at any point.
That looks like the big bad's castle...
...we get on a boat and become pirates.
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All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'll just say this - If in a dungeon there are two paths and I as a player am told to pick one - yet in the end they end up at the same encounter.
I think it comes down to scale a bit. If the premises is that they need to kill the big bad, all decision are going to end up leading to fighting the big bad, so it is just the journey is different. Unless you are happy for them to change the overarching plot at any point.
That looks like the big bad's castle...
...we get on a boat and become pirates.
Hiding information and lying to PCs are different. Yes we the DMs don't tell the players everything - but to give the player "Okay go down path A or B." Than when they choose A but the Troll was on B and simply moving the Troll because "Well they won't know" is ridiculous and you shouldn't be offering a choice if you don't like an outcome of the choice.
You're BBEG castle/ Become Priates, analogy fails in a lot of ways. Depending on the group and the social contract in place either decision is fine so long as the PCs made in character choices. If I'm playing a CN rogue and right before the castle we had a tough fight where we almost died. Guess what my character might think twice about going into that castle. Now if the social contract set up in Session 0 says "We play the story the DM gave us" than this is all moot (the word not the D&D book lol).
Story driven choices should just be like Dice rolls - don't ask for a choice if you don't want a different outcome. just like you don''t ask for a dice roll if you don't want the PC to fail it.
Think just not going to agree, you will have choices which aren't choices depending what scale you look at but you can continue to belive you dont.
Back to OP from a planning point of view have options but not endless options. Ignore the straw man argument that regardless of choice they find the troll, because how they get to the troll and where/how they fight him is far more interesting then deciding "why give them a choice" and just dumping a troll on them.
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All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
TL/DR
I’m a new DM and would like tips, pointers, and assistance with my approach to campaign/long-term planning.
My problem is balancing detail vs. railroading. The more detail I make, the more I feel like I railroad my party. On the other hand, having no detail makes the whole world feel lifeless and dry.
I want to hear criticisms for areas I can improve (with suggestions as to how I can improve them). Links and direct messages to similar queries are welcome. If I violate terms, feel free to inform/ban/demolish as you see fit.
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I would like to start by saying that I am a new DM. I’ve only played/run 5th edition with one group of friends, and only then for about 20 total (4-6 hr) sessions over one year.
Additionally, I was a player for a few sessions before that (one of my current players introduced me to the game as a player for the sole purpose of trying to get me to DM for him, as he wanted to be a PC and did not have anyone to DM for him).
While a player, I disliked the following when it happened to me:
While these are things that I really enjoyed:
This probably sounds like a rant against my DM. I assure you that is not my intent. I simply wish to lay the groundwork for my query. My flaws and ideals, if you will.
Now, the common theme in my likes and dislikes comes down to DM preparation: the more that was planned out and written down before the session, the less that has to be made up on the fly. However, the amount of work the DM has to do can spin out of control quite rapidly, as I’m discovering.
Please know that I do not have the background knowledge or experience to generate anything “on the fly.” Whenever my players take actions, talk to people, or go to places that I had not fully planned out, I get very uncomfortable: All the NPCs begin to sound the same and (in my opinion) lack the color of fully fleshed-out characters. The terrain loses detail. The monsters get dumber and lack the tactics I like to employ. We lose connection to any over-arching story, plot, or themes.
All these things happen because I’m working as frantically as possible, minute-by-minute, to generate something, anything that I can put in my players’ path. I’ll use a random table to generate the terrain, NPCs, and monsters, but I haven’t been playing D&D for the 30 years necessary to know that White Dragons are territorial animals while Green Dragons are smooth-talking evil manipulators. I’ve got a stat black and a dream, and I’m panicking every time.
I currently feel like there are two extremes of planning, and I am attempting to find a happy space between. Neither extreme is, in my opinion, acceptable:
Approach #1: Plan the Day Only
In this method, I approach the upcoming session by “filling the time.” Create 8 hours of content, to be sure that you don’t run out. In this method, use pallet-swapping, Quantum Ogres, and other DM slide-of-hand to have the party follow your script.
I consider this railroading the party, even if I do my best to hide it. However, the benefit is that it minimizes the prep work the DM has to do, as no prep work is thrown away because the party avoided it. It also avoids the panicked “on-the-fly” generation which I am so bad at.
You probably get the idea. I’ve done this before, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Approach #2 Create the Planet
This is the ideal, impossible approach I wish I could do: create an entire world, rich with detail and endless chances for interaction, mundane or otherwise.
I hope that I have conveyed the picture of my ideal by now. I wish I could create a living, breathing world for every session. One where, even if the PCs say in camp and talked in-character for a 4 hour session, the world would continue to move and live without them, for better or worse.
The big drawbacks of this are time, waste, and organization.
Another “drawback” is predictability, because I’ve heard that some DMs like to “discover” their content at the same time as their players using random tables to generate everything from the terrain to the creatures. Such a concept terrifies me: how am I supposed to tell my party a story I don’t know yet?
I actually did something like this for one session when we didn’t meet for six straight weeks. I just kept making more and more and more detail for the nearby forest, mountain, and village the party was near at the end of the last session (they went to the village). The amount of paper I had created was cumbersome and difficult to organize, but every NPC the party met had a picture, at least some personality, lines I had practiced, a reason to be there, some history, something they needed the party to do (or not do), and so on.
I felt it was one of my best sessions, but honest feedback is difficult to come by. Maybe it was my worst? Maybe they felt railroaded because I seemed so ready for everything they did? I’ll never know.
However, I never got to use any material I had prepared for the mountain or the forest. I re-purposed some of it, but that’s more prep work and time. I have a job and family, so I can’t afford to put that much prep into weekly or bi-weekly sessions.
All this finally brings me back to my original question. How can I approach planning sessions which balance the following:
Please remember that I am terrible at “on-the-fly” creation. If you come to my village and demand to meet the herbalist, and I didn’t make one prior, be ready for the driest, most emotionless automaton shopkeeper you’ve ever heard: All business, no love, buy your shit and get out. It’s not that I don’t want you to ask for an herbalist, it’s just that I get tons of details going in my head at once, and they just kind of cancel themselves out in the execution.
I have no idea how I can “get gud” at making stuff up on the spot.
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Thank you for reading my post. I hope that you can help me create an enjoyable new campaign for my friends.
Welcome to the other side.
One of the most important things I can recommend (it is my personal rule that this is mandatory) is a Session 0. What are your players expectations and what are your expectations for playing DnD. It appears you have an incredibly detailed list of "Do's and Don't's" described above that you would like to implement for your campaign. Does this jive with what your players want? Remember, both you and the players need to have fun. The following link has an interesting "check-list" for a Session 0:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/601awb/session0_topic_checklist_and_guide/
The next best piece of advice is Matt Colville series on Running the Game (as a DM) on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&index=2&t=11s
He likes, similar to what I am interpreting you prefer, a more sandbox approach to campaigns.
The final piece of advice, related to "how to get good at making stuff up on the spot", is to start your new PCs off with a really good pre-build adventure: Lost Mines of Phandelver. Running your PCs through this will allow you to get a taste for their playstyle, and it will help flesh out your personal experience level DM'ing. That, and it will get them up to about 5th level, ready to be thrust on the larger world around them, to tackle larger and more world shaking dilemas.
There are many other excellent DM's on this forum, so keep coming back here to get different perspectives on our DM'ing experiences (Reddit and youTube also have many good resources).
Most importantly of all, have fun gaming with your PCs and yourself!
The Matt Colville advice above is tops. Really worth the time.
Otherwise, more general tips: I typically plan for one more encounter than I think I'll need, just in case things go more smoothly than I anticipate.
If you don't like just bags of xp (me neither), then don't use random encounters.
If there is a big choice about what to do next (e.g. do we take the south road or the east road or just stay here in town?), always have the players make it at the end of the session. There's a bit of a social contract in them sticking to it, but generally, it leaves you only having to prepare for one scenario, so you can put more depth into what you do.
Don't overprepare. and you'll know what that means for your group. Are they going to sit down and RP a half-hour talk with the innkeeper? then its good to have a lot of backstory for him. Are they just going to say, I go out drinking and handwave the details? Then you don't even need a name for the innkeeper.
Keep a list of names pre-generated, in case you need one for someone you thought was going to be random and unused.
Let your players help you build the world. If they are from some village halfway around the world, tell them to write up a bit about it. A member of a knightly order, tell them to write up the order. It helps them get invested in the world, and takes some things off of your plate.
Players need to know their own characters. They should know if a spell needs an attack roll or a save, and what their save DC is, and all those bits and pieces. f you can understand how every monster in the world attacks, they can spend the time to know their own character.
Thank you for your replies. I will certainly be looking at those links shortly.
We just finished LMoP, and I think we’ve enjoyed it. My current plan is to try HotDQ with them
That being said, I plan to allow them to choose whether or not to go along with HotDQ in game. They might ignore the plight of the town or even join the cult of the dragon. I honestly don’t know, but I want to be ready for big twists like that.
As we went through LMoP, I got more and more comfortable adding elements and additional bits, so they got more XP as a result - the short version is that Glasstaff became a powerful, recurring villain who kept Dimension Door-ing away until the final showdown inside Wave Echo Cave.
After I was finished, I asked for a break for a while. My friend agreed to DM for a few months, and we’re currently playing through his Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.
I wanted to look back and critique myself, and I feel that I railroaded my party with LMoP.
The wake-up call was this:
The party is inside the cave, having just vanquished Glasstaff, but not yet having encountered the Black Spider. I suggest that Their characters are pretty tired, and that it might be wise to find a safe place from monsters for a short or long rest.
While looking for such a room, they encounter some more wandering undead. Two “pirate” themed characters, B and K, do not rush forward as usual, and hang back uncharacteristically, using javelins and other ranged attacks. Once the rest of the party was committed, they shouted “Captain’s Orders!” and proceed to betray the party, claiming that they were tired of the Bard’s jokes and sharing the loot.
The Bard, wounded and trapped, started casting Thunderwave and Shatter every turn he could to attract everything he could. This brought in the Black Spider and led to a TPK.
The players B and K laughed off the betrayal and the deaths of their characters, and everyone is pretty much over the drama at this point. However, I blame myself for it.
Had I not railroaded them, and engaged them more in the game they wanted to play, they wouldn’t have upended the whole situation like that, right?
That’s the big reason that I asked for help here, today. I want to start fresh and do things right. I know I can’t always please everyone, but I’m going to try, anyway.
A session 0 is a good idea, and I will certainly implement it. Do you have other suggestions?
I think you have to let go of the whole “doing it right” mentality, the amount of work you are trying to put in combined with how focussed you are on doing it right you are just going to burn out.
so think about why you want to have a big detailed world? Do you have a story to tell? Is it a narrative path or emergent?
You have decided the only options is over prepared sandbox or railroading but there is a middle ground. You can have overarching themes, foreshadowing and narrative without it being railroading.
don’t worry so much about reacting to your players in the moment, think about reacting long term.
one of your players RP’s s moment where they tell the party their mother was eaten by an ancient white dragon called Smirnoff, you don’t have to throw away everything you did up-to that point and send them dragon hunting. But note it down and get back to it.
use the tools at your disposal trike the heroic chronicle and goals to generate plot points. But mostly talk to your players
That's not on you at all. Players betraying the rest of the party? Not on you. Others have suggested a session 0, and that could really help here. If those players were unhappy with the way things were going, they should have said something out of character, instead of acting like children and blowing everything up for everyone else.
Also, I'm not sure where you were railroading in the scenario you described. Suggesting they take a rest is being kind, not railroading. I guess, some railroading is inevitable when you used a published adventure, but it seems like you were breaking out of that a bit, which can be good. It really doesn't seem like you were forcing anything, or only allowing them one way to solve a problem, which is really what railroading is (my definition, anyway. others might say it better).
You can railroad them, the trick is not letting them know. If they expect you to have a fully fleshed out world stetting that you can have ready on the fly, then there are some problems. Often the session 0 style play will not have fixed those. However, the players may just be able to be told "Yes, you can join the Cult of the Dragon, but now I have about 2 months of work to generate content and you may not like how it goes." if they can handle that, you are good.
Making the railroading more subtle is somewhat easy, and gets easier as you do it more often.
That adventure flow has branches along it but they all go to the same place. The players decision affect the outcome and how the encounter with the hag is dictated. They were railroaded on part of the adventure, but they had choices all along the way.
It's not really possible to avoid it taking a chunk of time to design an encounter (with map and all), but there's a simple trick to make it not bog the game down: embrace the cliffhanger. You can have simple fights at any point during a session, but if PCs are headed for some big complex thing, call the session (or for long sessions, call a break) and the actual fight occurs when they return. This lets you plan things out during downtime.
Have it like how computer games have to load. If they go off track badly and you need to correct it, just do as Pantagruel666 suggested and tell them have to stop and load the next level. The load time may be a 15 minutes or a few weeks, but that would give you breathing space.
Whatever you do, do not follow any advise that says "Here's how to railroad." You can have an over arching theme but player choice should still matter. If you present them with 3 options, but all those options end up at the same conclusion - you have taken away player agency and might as well have everyone sitting around a table while you talk for 4 hours a weekend. Yes, you can have story that the players follow and you can poke and prod, but please do not make it so what ever the players do, the content you made gets used. Part of being a DM is planning 12 encounters and the PCs only activating 1 of them. That's just how it goes!
The biggest thing to remember about Dnd is it is cooperative story telling. So you need to listens to the wants of the Players just as much as they need to listen to you. I highly recommend sitting down with the PCs and doing a Session 0. That can clear the air and you ca discuss things like "Look If you choose to go wildly off track, I won't have anything prepared." or even just seeing what these players want out of the week. Like why did those two PCs turn on the others? What was the actual reason?
My working elements in a campaign are hooks that involve the PCs personally, triggers, consequences and an overarching plot.
With these parts you can lead the game wherever the players are going, but if they do not follow the hooks or they avoid specific trigger events, then there are consequences in the game world, leading to events, that can hook the players in again, in a different way.
Saying this, my overall arcs are typically heavy changes to the world.
Not to add even more conflicting advice to the thread but I don’t agree with some of the things that are being said. Not all rail reading is bad, not all player follow through is good, and not all plot is railroading.
yes it’s co-operative story telling but you are part of that co-op not its admin. While you are not player in the game you are part of it and that has to be worthwhile for you. If you are preparing 12 things and using 1 that is not “the cost of DMing” that is an exercise in burnout.
What’s important is that your players don’t feel forced into anything, that it seems a natural progression, the 3 choices that lead to one place is not bad. They choose the journey, you the destination. They are only playing it once, they don’t need to see the sticky tape holding it together.
uour players will not care how much time you spent plotting out every single hex on a map if the encounters end up boring. And they won’t care you have a set path if it’s an interesting and exciting one.
don’t burn yourself out trying to make 15 balanced encounters, make 3 good ones with 3 ways they can be approached. That’s 6 less encounters
Agreed. If you do not stop the players from making decisions, and you steer the decision making back to the plot and the destination, while the players feel their decisions shape the story, you are doing a good job as a DM. No one needs 12+ prepared options, even if the PCs are doing the sandbox thing and go wherever they want. As a DM you can use events and encounters to influence what the players want.
I'll just say this - If in a dungeon there are two paths and I as a player am told to pick one - yet in the end they end up at the same encounter. Why am I even given a choice then? That is a major issue and I completely disagree that that "okay because the journey." Now if you mean that traveling from one continent to another has multiple paths that end in the same end point, of course the end point was decided prior to the trip. But don't make player choice 100% not matter because "Well i made this encounter and I want it used." Like I said if you need to use everything you make as a DM - then don't play simply tell the PCs what happens.
I disagree that "railroading is good so long as the players feel like they had a choice" - because that means lying to you friends and players and breaking a social contract. Now if during a session 0 you all agree that the DM can at any point override player choice then that's fine. However the players agreed to that verbally, and that's the biggest thing. I'll reiterate you and the players need to sit down and discuss what you want from the game.
I think the illusion of choice is a valid way to make everyone happy; the players feel like they have agency (which is what matters, the experience of the game) and the DM can make more efficient use of their time and energy preparing content that will be used, rather than twice as much with half being discarded.
Creating an illusion of choice is no more lying than any other conceit of the game to make the DMs like easier is lying. The DM keeps secrets from the players, that's the nature of the game, and sometimes that secret is "no matter which road you took, the encounter would be the same".
Ultimately if the players don't know, it doesn't matter as long as they had fun.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I think it comes down to scale a bit. If the premises is that they need to kill the big bad, all decision are going to end up leading to fighting the big bad, so it is just the journey is different. Unless you are happy for them to change the overarching plot at any point.
That looks like the big bad's castle...
...we get on a boat and become pirates.
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Hiding information and lying to PCs are different. Yes we the DMs don't tell the players everything - but to give the player "Okay go down path A or B." Than when they choose A but the Troll was on B and simply moving the Troll because "Well they won't know" is ridiculous and you shouldn't be offering a choice if you don't like an outcome of the choice.
You're BBEG castle/ Become Priates, analogy fails in a lot of ways. Depending on the group and the social contract in place either decision is fine so long as the PCs made in character choices. If I'm playing a CN rogue and right before the castle we had a tough fight where we almost died. Guess what my character might think twice about going into that castle. Now if the social contract set up in Session 0 says "We play the story the DM gave us" than this is all moot (the word not the D&D book lol).
Story driven choices should just be like Dice rolls - don't ask for a choice if you don't want a different outcome. just like you don''t ask for a dice roll if you don't want the PC to fail it.
Think just not going to agree, you will have choices which aren't choices depending what scale you look at but you can continue to belive you dont.
Back to OP from a planning point of view have options but not endless options. Ignore the straw man argument that regardless of choice they find the troll, because how they get to the troll and where/how they fight him is far more interesting then deciding "why give them a choice" and just dumping a troll on them.
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Since apparently my opinion is "Straw man Arguments" Here are some videos that might help you
Matt Coville - On Rails
Web DM: Jump off the Rails