Pea here. I'm going to be running my first ever campaign in two/three weeks time. I'm bricking it, not gonna lie. But like an excited bricking it, y'know?
I have done some prep, but find myself getting overwhelmed and then frustrated. Is there a way that people organise doing a session in small, organised chunks?
Also any tips towards the actual campaign itself? Im running a party of 5, starting them level 3 to give me some room for error in regards to encounters etc. I have three wizards (lol help squish) A fighter and a cleric or barbarian (I believe).
Any help, hints and tips are SO appreciated. Pls help, share wisdom, do me a good'n.
Try not to plan in detail beyond what you think can fit in the next two session, because the choices your players make will invalidate much of your pre-planning. Do still read ahead to keep a general idea of what lies ahead, but too much planning is futile.
Best advice I can give you is to watch this series by Matt Colville, about how to run D&D:
EDIT: In terms of Out of the Abyss... If it's not too late, I suggest trying a beginner's adventure with them, like Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak, or Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. These adventures are shorter and not as complex. The first two are explicitly made for new DMs to run. Unless your players have already played in them, I'd go with one of those first.
Out of the Abyss has a rep. for being very... "exhausting" I guess, to a lot of the players. Several of the YouTube DMs who are experienced and who have run lots of adventures have said that they have started but not been able to finish it. So I would be hesitant to start with that one.
I have done Out of the Abyss as my first campaign as a DM and think it went absolutely fine. The good thing about this story is that the book is quite structured compared to for example Storm King's Thunder. Meaning, you have a very strong and obvious plothook "eek we're in the underdark and want to get out!", you have a nice mechanism to keep them on the move "help! we're being chased by a bunch of drow" and it's quite easy to prepare the next leg of the journey. Offcourse they have some directions to choose from, but as long as you prepare the traveling mechanism with interesting encounters (these are pretty good compared to others!) - you have at least 1 or 2 sessions until you get to the next big location, meaning you don't have to prepare all of them.
There is one challenge, which I enjoyed much, is playing all the NPC's. But there is some good (i think free) material to support that on dmsguild which gives you printable NPC cards and tokens. I printed them and marked down their roleplaying feats, main stats and attack rolls on the backside.
What I didn't do is changing the dynamics as you did by giving them extra levels, I think the darkness and chance of dying in a battle is what keeps this campaign moving and I didn't notice to many character deaths.
Is this your first time as a DM, or just first time running a campaign? Either way, way to be!
I sort of run each session like a one shot.
I generally plan on my characters getting through 3-5 things per 2-3 hour session, where a "thing" is a puzzle, a trap, a battle, a role playing encounter, etc. Then there I have some sort of a natural pause point. So on a given day, that's as far as I plan out: just 3-5 things (and 5 is a LOT if you have 5 players), along with a bit of a hint on next time's adventure if I can.
Don't be afraid to edit or pare down the adventure. If it has more grueling random encounters than you want, toss them. It's your game.
1) Skim through the campaign so that you know the overall goals and objectives. You ideally want to tie in the later parts and motivate them early on. However, to foreshadow anything you need to know what could happen down the road. So try to have a general idea of the overall long term plot line.
2) Get a good idea of where they start. What are their options. What choices they can make. Try to read over the content they could reach so that, again, you know how it is supposed ro develop. There is a very good chance it will not develop that way because of player decisions but you want to have a basic idea of the the content they are likely to hit during the session and to have at least skimmed most of the book so that if they make an unexpected decision you aren't left in the dark trying to read the source material.
3) Don't be afraid if you make a mistake especially with the plot. Remember, the players don't know what the plot is supposed to be so if you accidentally change the behaviour of an NPC or have things develop differently than the printed book - don't worry about it - just go with it. Most of the time whatever gets changed isn't the end of the world :) ... but if there is an unexpected twist to the plot then add an NPC, encounter, event or other item to get things back to where you want them to be (this is why you want to have an idea of the overall intended direction - you want to get to the same end but maybe not worry too much about details if you make a mistake or two along the way).
4) Starting at level 3 will make encounters easier to balance to some extent since they are less likely to die from an unexpected crit but you may find yourself having to increase encounter difficulty on the fly because something difficult for a level 1 will be trivial for a level 3. There is quite a significant difference in capability between level 1 and 3.
I am currently running Curse of Strahd and I expected that the party would mostly go to one of two locations. However, there were decent odds they could go three other places so I had to have ideas of how the world would develop based on 5 likely scenarios (and they could STILL have decided to do something unexpected since there are a couple of directions they haven't explored yet. Luckily, we've been playing quite a few sessions so far and they just reached level 7 so by now I have read most of the adventure so even if I don't have the details I have a pretty good idea of how each path could develop.
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Morning,
Pea here. I'm going to be running my first ever campaign in two/three weeks time. I'm bricking it, not gonna lie. But like an excited bricking it, y'know?
I have done some prep, but find myself getting overwhelmed and then frustrated. Is there a way that people organise doing a session in small, organised chunks?
Also any tips towards the actual campaign itself? Im running a party of 5, starting them level 3 to give me some room for error in regards to encounters etc. I have three wizards (lol help squish) A fighter and a cleric or barbarian (I believe).
Any help, hints and tips are SO appreciated. Pls help, share wisdom, do me a good'n.
Try not to plan in detail beyond what you think can fit in the next two session, because the choices your players make will invalidate much of your pre-planning. Do still read ahead to keep a general idea of what lies ahead, but too much planning is futile.
Edit: Also, grats on running your first campaign!
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Best advice I can give you is to watch this series by Matt Colville, about how to run D&D:
EDIT:
In terms of Out of the Abyss... If it's not too late, I suggest trying a beginner's adventure with them, like Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak, or Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. These adventures are shorter and not as complex. The first two are explicitly made for new DMs to run. Unless your players have already played in them, I'd go with one of those first.
Out of the Abyss has a rep. for being very... "exhausting" I guess, to a lot of the players. Several of the YouTube DMs who are experienced and who have run lots of adventures have said that they have started but not been able to finish it. So I would be hesitant to start with that one.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Make sure you understand the classes they play. Create one of each and see what options they get at higher levels to avoid surprises and discussions.
playing since 1986
Might contain spoilers.
I have done Out of the Abyss as my first campaign as a DM and think it went absolutely fine. The good thing about this story is that the book is quite structured compared to for example Storm King's Thunder. Meaning, you have a very strong and obvious plothook "eek we're in the underdark and want to get out!", you have a nice mechanism to keep them on the move "help! we're being chased by a bunch of drow" and it's quite easy to prepare the next leg of the journey. Offcourse they have some directions to choose from, but as long as you prepare the traveling mechanism with interesting encounters (these are pretty good compared to others!) - you have at least 1 or 2 sessions until you get to the next big location, meaning you don't have to prepare all of them.
There is one challenge, which I enjoyed much, is playing all the NPC's. But there is some good (i think free) material to support that on dmsguild which gives you printable NPC cards and tokens. I printed them and marked down their roleplaying feats, main stats and attack rolls on the backside.
What I didn't do is changing the dynamics as you did by giving them extra levels, I think the darkness and chance of dying in a battle is what keeps this campaign moving and I didn't notice to many character deaths.
Good luck!
Is this your first time as a DM, or just first time running a campaign? Either way, way to be!
I sort of run each session like a one shot.
I generally plan on my characters getting through 3-5 things per 2-3 hour session, where a "thing" is a puzzle, a trap, a battle, a role playing encounter, etc. Then there I have some sort of a natural pause point. So on a given day, that's as far as I plan out: just 3-5 things (and 5 is a LOT if you have 5 players), along with a bit of a hint on next time's adventure if I can.
Don't be afraid to edit or pare down the adventure. If it has more grueling random encounters than you want, toss them. It's your game.
Just some tips/suggestions ..
1) Skim through the campaign so that you know the overall goals and objectives. You ideally want to tie in the later parts and motivate them early on. However, to foreshadow anything you need to know what could happen down the road. So try to have a general idea of the overall long term plot line.
2) Get a good idea of where they start. What are their options. What choices they can make. Try to read over the content they could reach so that, again, you know how it is supposed ro develop. There is a very good chance it will not develop that way because of player decisions but you want to have a basic idea of the the content they are likely to hit during the session and to have at least skimmed most of the book so that if they make an unexpected decision you aren't left in the dark trying to read the source material.
3) Don't be afraid if you make a mistake especially with the plot. Remember, the players don't know what the plot is supposed to be so if you accidentally change the behaviour of an NPC or have things develop differently than the printed book - don't worry about it - just go with it. Most of the time whatever gets changed isn't the end of the world :) ... but if there is an unexpected twist to the plot then add an NPC, encounter, event or other item to get things back to where you want them to be (this is why you want to have an idea of the overall intended direction - you want to get to the same end but maybe not worry too much about details if you make a mistake or two along the way).
4) Starting at level 3 will make encounters easier to balance to some extent since they are less likely to die from an unexpected crit but you may find yourself having to increase encounter difficulty on the fly because something difficult for a level 1 will be trivial for a level 3. There is quite a significant difference in capability between level 1 and 3.
I am currently running Curse of Strahd and I expected that the party would mostly go to one of two locations. However, there were decent odds they could go three other places so I had to have ideas of how the world would develop based on 5 likely scenarios (and they could STILL have decided to do something unexpected since there are a couple of directions they haven't explored yet. Luckily, we've been playing quite a few sessions so far and they just reached level 7 so by now I have read most of the adventure so even if I don't have the details I have a pretty good idea of how each path could develop.