1) The first thing I would suggest is having a session 0 where you lay out some of the framework for the campaign. Players can come up with many wonderful ideas but they may not all fit with the world that has been created. As a DM, you have to discuss with the players their ideas for their characters in the context of a world that they may know nothing about. You want to surprise the other DMs but you need to also keep in mind that there is a lot of common knowledge that the characters SHOULD know and be aware of depending on their backgrounds. What types of creatures are common? Are the areas outside of towns generally safe or dangerous? Are the towns orderly or full of crime? Does it vary? Do people travel around much or do the majority of people stay within 10 miles from home for most their lives? Each character may have a different perspective on the game world.
Are orcs/goblins/hobgoblins evil predators or just another type of humanoid which have both good and bad elements? This could have a significant impact on the player who wants to run a hobgoblin wizard .. does that type of character even work in your game world. Are alignments hard and fast rules for how a creature sees the world and behaves or are they a guideline and individuals may behave differently?
Much of this information should actually be available to the players in general terms before or during character creation.
2) You need the players to buy into the campaign. There are character concepts that will NOT work well with a party. The chaotic neutral loner edge lord rogue who steals from the party, lives for themselves, robs innocents, kills folks just for fun (think Clockwork Orange and ultraviolence ... sometimes verging into murder hobos). No matter what the party composition, the PLAYERS need to develop reasons for their character to work with the other characters (unless you want a PVP campaign and I would recommend against it). Why the characters work together is up to the players to mostly determine. The DM can offer suggestions and guide them but basically the players have to decide that their characters are going to generally play nice with the rest of the party. Without that buy in, you will run into problems down the road as the part of individualists runs off to do their own thing ... triggering encounters, dying alone without backup, possibly causing problems for the rest of the party and at the very least really slowing down the session as you have to jump from one character to the next to see what they are doing (or in a worst case, have a single character off on their own for a long time while the rest of the folks are left twiddling their thumbs).
Occasional split ups, doing their own thing, are manageable, but a character created around being a loner will cause problems in the long run and it is up to the DM and the player to sort this out ideally before the game begins.
3) There are many good ways for the party to meet up.
- meeting at an inn in response to a call for adventurers to complete a task is a common approach
- meeting while on a trip or traveling to a destination is common
- connected backstories so that some or all of the characters already know each other (grew up together, went to school together, live in the same town/village) are also common options
- sometimes you can just start the campaign by saying that they characters have been working together at small jobs for the last month/3 months/year and work well together so decided to form and adventuring company and do some real jobs.
There are many ways to start things off and they all can work. It just depends on the players deciding to make the idea work.
Some examples:
- I've used the meet in a bar option and many of the others mentioned
- my Saltmarsh campaign started with the characters all taking passage on a ship to the town of Saltmarsh (for whatever character reason). They were all given a reduced rate for passage if they would work as guards if trouble arose. The trip was about a week, the characters shared a bunk room, had a chance to get to know each other. The ship was attacked about a day out of Saltmarsh, the characters worked together to fend off the attackers and protect the ship. The characters decided that they liked each other well enough to at least stay together for a bit when they made landfall in Saltmarsh (the captain also gave each a healing potion as a bonus for their actions defending the ship). One of the characters is a bit more of a loner/not so wise/do their own thing type but with a little juggling I've managed to keep it under control. On the other hand, with this particular player, the type of character was more or less expected so I knew in advance a bit of balancing would be required.
I'm currently finishing up my first ever campaign as a DM and I've learned a lot, but here's a few things I've learned in roughly the order I learned them:
Note: Everything I'm saying here is still as a first time DM and more experienced DM's might very well(and rightly so) disagree with me!
SIMPLE CHARACTERS: I love to make complicated characters too, but as a first time DM, you've got enough things to worry about. For me it was a changeling character that didn't behave as I expected the player to behave (more on expectations below). Ask your players to create characters that have a clear drive to adventure and maybe even more inclined to help people than not. Characters that know each other from "before" the campaign are even better, as they'll have good relations with each other, making it easier on you for when you lay out a hook for one character, the others are more inclined to help/follow without clear motivations for themselves.
EXPECTATIONS: No situation will go as you think! Okay, maybe some will, but there's always something that will be different. Have backup plans for your backup plans (more on planning & prep below). The amazing hook you created for that one character you think will rock their world might be ignored ENTIRELY. They might pass by the town you lovingly created and extensively designed NPC's for. You can read this and think you can prepare for it, but when it hits you during the game and catches you off-guard, only quick wit or experience will be able to help you, and well, as first time DM, I didn't have the last one, as at times I just wasn't quick-witted enough :)
PLANNING & PREP: You'll have to find a balance between winging it and preparing. I used to roughly plan out most avenues I could think of, but that is way too time-consuming. But the keyword there is 'roughly'. When you're making your own world, you definitely need to do some prep, after all, only you know what is there. That's even true of modules but they are much more forgiving. Make a list of what you think your players are going to do in the session and/or make a location for them so they have their moment. Did the bard say something about visiting an instrument shop last session? Work out a rough draft for that shop. If he doesn't look for it, file it away. Nothing prepped is ever wasted (unless it is very, very specific), you can use it some other time. My artificer is really into hextech, maybe he'll uncover an ancient monolith in the forest detailing a fallen empire that relied on it? There are many resources to find random scraps of lore all over the web that you can adapt for your own, which brings me to the next topic.
WORLD & MODULES: I went for my own homebrew setting too; it just appealed to me much more than running a module. This brings added difficulty but with some good prep and some help from existing modules you can do it. This comes with its own pitfalls but is very useful nonetheless! My main setting was a big magitech city in a jungle. For the city I looked at city-based modules and read them, sometimes taking inspiration not necessarily from the content but from how it was written (example Waterdeep dragonheist). They give a good example as to how the main quest can develop and how locations are described. Eventually, my players went into the jungle around the city and for this, I read Tomb Of Annihilation. I played around with how travel worked and adapted a bunch of locations to my needs, sometimes creating my own but also sometimes just straight-up copying them and adding small things to them that made sense to MY story(I used the firefinger, swapped out a single NPC and added some pterafolk).
Your players are jon snow, they know nothing. You can always prep something and not use it until much later or even adapt it on the fly.
STORY & PLAYER EXPECTATION: Maybe evident for some, but for me not so much. I only played Dragonheist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage as a player before making my own setting, so I heavily mirrored what those modules did. Modules (in my opinion) inherently do not consider the players themselves or their stories. This lead to me trying to tell a story that my players weren't very interested in while they wanted to explore their own characters' stories more. This also goes back to what I said before about characters having a clear reason to adventure. I had a Kraken with its own cult trying to get access to ancient Netheril magics, which I thought was very compelling, but as I found out, I was the only one. Have a session 0, talk about what they want to do and what you want to do. Deadly dungeon-crawling or more relaxed campaign?
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to think of more things you can consider as a first time DM, but in the end, the experience is what will make you a good DM.
And remember to have funtoo, if you don't find joy in the campaign anymore, take a break or finish it up. Probably a shorter campaign will help too.
EDIT: I thought up one more: USE A BINDER:A laptop is an invaluable resource for quick images, rule searches, stat blocks, etc but some thing that do not change you can best put into a binder. You will know perfectly where they are and they won't clutter up your browser with dozens of tabs. About halfway through I started using a binder because I noticed my screen could become a true mess after a while. Some notable examples of things in my binder: 1) The shopping catalogue (by u/Inalisk and u/jrobharing over on reddit, just look it up, I don't know if I'm allowed to post the link) helps immensely when your player asks the price for an item you didn't prepare for. Don't know from the top of your head how much those supplies or that banana should cost? That list has you covered. 2) Name lists: Need some quick names for NPCs? Grab one from the list and scratch it out (remember to write it down somewhere if the NPC will appear again some other time) 3) Auto-generated NPC stat blocks for when your murder hobos strike again.
TransmorpherDDS - Don't worry, I've sort of built a world where this thing is happening but the world is built up enough that they could just wander around and find stuff to do. The one player that knows the BBEG is kinda obsessed though so he might annoy the other players till they move towards the plot lol.
As a DM, I love players like that.
As a player, I try to be that guy.
I think my problem is I'm a kind of chaotic player so I want to ramble around, might be why I'm concerned about getting my characters to follow the plot lol
I was worried about rambling too when i first started dming. I make very clear and consise notes though that help me know their past, present, intentions, and what important information they need to know. This especially helps me because i'm dyslexic and often pronounce important things wrong giving the players false ideas of what i mean- for exapmle once playing "dragon of icespire peak" i read "gnomenguard" as "gnomeraid" and they very nearly ransacked the place because of the word "raid". Hope this helps and your dming goes well!
I'm currently finishing up my first ever campaign as a DM and I've learned a lot, but here's a few things I've learned in roughly the order I learned them:
Note: Everything I'm saying here is still as a first time DM and more experienced DM's might very well(and rightly so) disagree with me!
SIMPLE CHARACTERS: I love to make complicated characters too, but as a first time DM, you've got enough things to worry about. For me it was a changeling character that didn't behave as I expected the player to behave (more on expectations below). Ask your players to create characters that have a clear drive to adventure and maybe even more inclined to help people than not. Characters that know each other from "before" the campaign are even better, as they'll have good relations with each other, making it easier on you for when you lay out a hook for one character, the others are more inclined to help/follow without clear motivations for themselves.
EXPECTATIONS: No situation will go as you think! Okay, maybe some will, but there's always something that will be different. Have backup plans for your backup plans (more on planning & prep below). The amazing hook you created for that one character you think will rock their world might be ignored ENTIRELY. They might pass by the town you lovingly created and extensively designed NPC's for. You can read this and think you can prepare for it, but when it hits you during the game and catches you off-guard, only quick wit or experience will be able to help you, and well, as first time DM, I didn't have the last one, as at times I just wasn't quick-witted enough :)
PLANNING & PREP: You'll have to find a balance between winging it and preparing. I used to roughly plan out most avenues I could think of, but that is way too time-consuming. But the keyword there is 'roughly'. When you're making your own world, you definitely need to do some prep, after all, only you know what is there. That's even true of modules but they are much more forgiving. Make a list of what you think your players are going to do in the session and/or make a location for them so they have their moment. Did the bard say something about visiting an instrument shop last session? Work out a rough draft for that shop. If he doesn't look for it, file it away. Nothing prepped is ever wasted (unless it is very, very specific), you can use it some other time. My artificer is really into hextech, maybe he'll uncover an ancient monolith in the forest detailing a fallen empire that relied on it? There are many resources to find random scraps of lore all over the web that you can adapt for your own, which brings me to the next topic.
WORLD & MODULES: I went for my own homebrew setting too; it just appealed to me much more than running a module. This brings added difficulty but with some good prep and some help from existing modules you can do it. This comes with its own pitfalls but is very useful nonetheless! My main setting was a big magitech city in a jungle. For the city I looked at city-based modules and read them, sometimes taking inspiration not necessarily from the content but from how it was written (example Waterdeep dragonheist). They give a good example as to how the main quest can develop and how locations are described. Eventually, my players went into the jungle around the city and for this, I read Tomb Of Annihilation. I played around with how travel worked and adapted a bunch of locations to my needs, sometimes creating my own but also sometimes just straight-up copying them and adding small things to them that made sense to MY story(I used the firefinger, swapped out a single NPC and added some pterafolk).
Your players are jon snow, they know nothing. You can always prep something and not use it until much later or even adapt it on the fly.
STORY & PLAYER EXPECTATION: Maybe evident for some, but for me not so much. I only played Dragonheist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage as a player before making my own setting, so I heavily mirrored what those modules did. Modules (in my opinion) inherently do not consider the players themselves or their stories. This lead to me trying to tell a story that my players weren't very interested in while they wanted to explore their own characters' stories more. This also goes back to what I said before about characters having a clear reason to adventure. I had a Kraken with its own cult trying to get access to ancient Netheril magics, which I thought was very compelling, but as I found out, I was the only one. Have a session 0, talk about what they want to do and what you want to do. Deadly dungeon-crawling or more relaxed campaign?
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to think of more things you can consider as a first time DM, but in the end, the experience is what will make you a good DM.
And remember to have funtoo, if you don't find joy in the campaign anymore, take a break or finish it up. Probably a shorter campaign will help too.
EDIT: I thought up one more: USE A BINDER:A laptop is an invaluable resource for quick images, rule searches, stat blocks, etc but some thing that do not change you can best put into a binder. You will know perfectly where they are and they won't clutter up your browser with dozens of tabs. About halfway through I started using a binder because I noticed my screen could become a true mess after a while. Some notable examples of things in my binder: 1) The shopping catalogue (by u/Inalisk and u/jrobharing over on reddit, just look it up, I don't know if I'm allowed to post the link) helps immensely when your player asks the price for an item you didn't prepare for. Don't know from the top of your head how much those supplies or that banana should cost? That list has you covered. 2) Name lists: Need some quick names for NPCs? Grab one from the list and scratch it out (remember to write it down somewhere if the NPC will appear again some other time) 3) Auto-generated NPC stat blocks for when your murder hobos strike again.
Thank you for posting your thoughts as a first time DM! This is super helpful
Hi! Good luck! I hope it goes well.
1) The first thing I would suggest is having a session 0 where you lay out some of the framework for the campaign. Players can come up with many wonderful ideas but they may not all fit with the world that has been created. As a DM, you have to discuss with the players their ideas for their characters in the context of a world that they may know nothing about. You want to surprise the other DMs but you need to also keep in mind that there is a lot of common knowledge that the characters SHOULD know and be aware of depending on their backgrounds. What types of creatures are common? Are the areas outside of towns generally safe or dangerous? Are the towns orderly or full of crime? Does it vary? Do people travel around much or do the majority of people stay within 10 miles from home for most their lives? Each character may have a different perspective on the game world.
Are orcs/goblins/hobgoblins evil predators or just another type of humanoid which have both good and bad elements? This could have a significant impact on the player who wants to run a hobgoblin wizard .. does that type of character even work in your game world. Are alignments hard and fast rules for how a creature sees the world and behaves or are they a guideline and individuals may behave differently?
Much of this information should actually be available to the players in general terms before or during character creation.
2) You need the players to buy into the campaign. There are character concepts that will NOT work well with a party. The chaotic neutral loner edge lord rogue who steals from the party, lives for themselves, robs innocents, kills folks just for fun (think Clockwork Orange and ultraviolence ... sometimes verging into murder hobos). No matter what the party composition, the PLAYERS need to develop reasons for their character to work with the other characters (unless you want a PVP campaign and I would recommend against it). Why the characters work together is up to the players to mostly determine. The DM can offer suggestions and guide them but basically the players have to decide that their characters are going to generally play nice with the rest of the party. Without that buy in, you will run into problems down the road as the part of individualists runs off to do their own thing ... triggering encounters, dying alone without backup, possibly causing problems for the rest of the party and at the very least really slowing down the session as you have to jump from one character to the next to see what they are doing (or in a worst case, have a single character off on their own for a long time while the rest of the folks are left twiddling their thumbs).
Occasional split ups, doing their own thing, are manageable, but a character created around being a loner will cause problems in the long run and it is up to the DM and the player to sort this out ideally before the game begins.
3) There are many good ways for the party to meet up.
- meeting at an inn in response to a call for adventurers to complete a task is a common approach
- meeting while on a trip or traveling to a destination is common
- connected backstories so that some or all of the characters already know each other (grew up together, went to school together, live in the same town/village) are also common options
- sometimes you can just start the campaign by saying that they characters have been working together at small jobs for the last month/3 months/year and work well together so decided to form and adventuring company and do some real jobs.
There are many ways to start things off and they all can work. It just depends on the players deciding to make the idea work.
Some examples:
- I've used the meet in a bar option and many of the others mentioned
- my Saltmarsh campaign started with the characters all taking passage on a ship to the town of Saltmarsh (for whatever character reason). They were all given a reduced rate for passage if they would work as guards if trouble arose. The trip was about a week, the characters shared a bunk room, had a chance to get to know each other. The ship was attacked about a day out of Saltmarsh, the characters worked together to fend off the attackers and protect the ship. The characters decided that they liked each other well enough to at least stay together for a bit when they made landfall in Saltmarsh (the captain also gave each a healing potion as a bonus for their actions defending the ship). One of the characters is a bit more of a loner/not so wise/do their own thing type but with a little juggling I've managed to keep it under control. On the other hand, with this particular player, the type of character was more or less expected so I knew in advance a bit of balancing would be required.
I'm currently finishing up my first ever campaign as a DM and I've learned a lot, but here's a few things I've learned in roughly the order I learned them:
Note: Everything I'm saying here is still as a first time DM and more experienced DM's might very well(and rightly so) disagree with me!
SIMPLE CHARACTERS: I love to make complicated characters too, but as a first time DM, you've got enough things to worry about. For me it was a changeling character that didn't behave as I expected the player to behave (more on expectations below). Ask your players to create characters that have a clear drive to adventure and maybe even more inclined to help people than not. Characters that know each other from "before" the campaign are even better, as they'll have good relations with each other, making it easier on you for when you lay out a hook for one character, the others are more inclined to help/follow without clear motivations for themselves.
EXPECTATIONS: No situation will go as you think! Okay, maybe some will, but there's always something that will be different. Have backup plans for your backup plans (more on planning & prep below). The amazing hook you created for that one character you think will rock their world might be ignored ENTIRELY. They might pass by the town you lovingly created and extensively designed NPC's for. You can read this and think you can prepare for it, but when it hits you during the game and catches you off-guard, only quick wit or experience will be able to help you, and well, as first time DM, I didn't have the last one, as at times I just wasn't quick-witted enough :)
PLANNING & PREP: You'll have to find a balance between winging it and preparing. I used to roughly plan out most avenues I could think of, but that is way too time-consuming. But the keyword there is 'roughly'. When you're making your own world, you definitely need to do some prep, after all, only you know what is there. That's even true of modules but they are much more forgiving. Make a list of what you think your players are going to do in the session and/or make a location for them so they have their moment. Did the bard say something about visiting an instrument shop last session? Work out a rough draft for that shop. If he doesn't look for it, file it away. Nothing prepped is ever wasted (unless it is very, very specific), you can use it some other time. My artificer is really into hextech, maybe he'll uncover an ancient monolith in the forest detailing a fallen empire that relied on it? There are many resources to find random scraps of lore all over the web that you can adapt for your own, which brings me to the next topic.
WORLD & MODULES: I went for my own homebrew setting too; it just appealed to me much more than running a module. This brings added difficulty but with some good prep and some help from existing modules you can do it. This comes with its own pitfalls but is very useful nonetheless! My main setting was a big magitech city in a jungle. For the city I looked at city-based modules and read them, sometimes taking inspiration not necessarily from the content but from how it was written (example Waterdeep dragonheist). They give a good example as to how the main quest can develop and how locations are described. Eventually, my players went into the jungle around the city and for this, I read Tomb Of Annihilation. I played around with how travel worked and adapted a bunch of locations to my needs, sometimes creating my own but also sometimes just straight-up copying them and adding small things to them that made sense to MY story(I used the firefinger, swapped out a single NPC and added some pterafolk).
Your players are jon snow, they know nothing. You can always prep something and not use it until much later or even adapt it on the fly.
STORY & PLAYER EXPECTATION: Maybe evident for some, but for me not so much. I only played Dragonheist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage as a player before making my own setting, so I heavily mirrored what those modules did. Modules (in my opinion) inherently do not consider the players themselves or their stories. This lead to me trying to tell a story that my players weren't very interested in while they wanted to explore their own characters' stories more. This also goes back to what I said before about characters having a clear reason to adventure. I had a Kraken with its own cult trying to get access to ancient Netheril magics, which I thought was very compelling, but as I found out, I was the only one. Have a session 0, talk about what they want to do and what you want to do. Deadly dungeon-crawling or more relaxed campaign?
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to think of more things you can consider as a first time DM, but in the end, the experience is what will make you a good DM.
And remember to have fun too, if you don't find joy in the campaign anymore, take a break or finish it up. Probably a shorter campaign will help too.
EDIT: I thought up one more: USE A BINDER: A laptop is an invaluable resource for quick images, rule searches, stat blocks, etc but some thing that do not change you can best put into a binder. You will know perfectly where they are and they won't clutter up your browser with dozens of tabs. About halfway through I started using a binder because I noticed my screen could become a true mess after a while. Some notable examples of things in my binder: 1) The shopping catalogue (by u/Inalisk and u/jrobharing over on reddit, just look it up, I don't know if I'm allowed to post the link) helps immensely when your player asks the price for an item you didn't prepare for. Don't know from the top of your head how much those supplies or that banana should cost? That list has you covered. 2) Name lists: Need some quick names for NPCs? Grab one from the list and scratch it out (remember to write it down somewhere if the NPC will appear again some other time) 3) Auto-generated NPC stat blocks for when your murder hobos strike again.
Thanks for all the help!
Thank you for posting your thoughts as a first time DM! This is super helpful
Thank you everyone for all the advice and help! I really appreciate it!