Help make my D&D game awesome!

Spawnbroker

H/A, I need some advice! I am going to start DMing for a bunch of new players to D&D this weekend, and I was wondering if anyone could help me think of ways to make it really fun for these people who have almost no idea what D&D is. Every person in the group except for me has never played before, and I've been playing for almost 15 years now.

So, the details. My first session is going to have only three people. My major concern is, what happens if nobody plays a class with healing abilities? I am considering giving them a random cleric mercenary if that happens to act as heal bot.

I'm starting them all off at level 1 with a fairly straightforward 'protect the town' adventure. I'll be rolling up their characters prior to the game and just letting them choose which ones they want. I plan on having 5-6 characters made up with each class type representing.

None of them has any dice (though I have plenty) or books, but I have a full set of books for myself. Any ideas on how not to get bogged down in the mechanics in having to look things up all the time? I'm not terribly familiar with 4th Edition rules quite yet, but from what I've read so far it looks like it's a lot more newbie friendly than 3.5

I don't have a hex grid, but I bought some of those premade dungeon tiles to use. Since I don't really have a map to draw on, what do you guys recommend for use if I need to improvise? The local game store didn't have a hex map in stock, so I'm kind of screwed on this one. Any ideas?


So, H/A, any further tips and tricks you suggest that I can do to make my friends' first D&D session more enjoyable?

Endomatic

What I've always done is placed a character that I have control over in order to guide them if they get off track, or heal them if required (it's usually a cleric, or paladin).

That's worked for me.

Antithesis

Something that's worked for me from time to time is to give some boss a pet as insurance. It can be stronger or weaker than the boss itself.

If their party kills either the pet or the boss and still looks strong, let them fight it out! You've made things more exciting!

If they struggle to kill either one and look like they'll all die if they have to tackle the second, have whichever one is still alive "flee"!

Or if your party arrives nearly dead, have the pet ready, but have the boss send it off with a message when your party arrives.

It lets you discreetly make the session more or less difficult as necessary.


As for dungeon tiles, large graphing paper can work. Dunno, though.

kuhlmeye

If you want them to not get bogged down looking through books, download the Character Builder from WotC website. It's free for the first 3 levels, and lets you print out power cards, which outlines their powers, what they roll, the damage they do, and makes it generally easier for new players to get comfortable with their abilities.

As for something to draw maps on, I highly suggest investing in a large-ish white board, and drawing a grid on it. That way you have something that is fairly large, and also allows to alter as needed!

Reznik

A little while ago I was in a (mostly) newbie group playing 4e. Things that helped:

- rulebooks pulled up on laptop/nearby computer in addition to having the physical books. much faster for searching
- minis (although because the DM had so many of them we got a bit distracted looking through all of them)

The DM did something cool one time that you might want to try if you have the setup. He hooked his laptop up to the TV, opened the map in photoshop and had a solid colour layer over top that he'd erase as we moved on and explored the map. Then once we got to a combat situation we'd go back to the physical map and just draw out the little area that we were fighting in

Willeth

I've been in a campaign for a month or so where our cleric just hasn't shown. The combat's still been suitably epic. That could well be due to the DM, but as long as you don't overuse mechanics that directly need a heal to counter, like ongoing damage, Second Winds should be enough to cover it.

Don't enforce time at the table. If someone's thinking over their move, let them think, don't force a delay. Maybe only have one encounter the first session, and expect it to be slow going. Allow metagaming. Eventually, once they're comfortable, start making them roleplay and plan on their own ahead of time.

Above all, if they think of something cool, try and let them do it. Don't say 'that wouldn't work' - make up a check, let them try and beat it, and if it IS impossible, give them a reason why they failed. We had a session recently where a player wanted to intimidate a character during combat, in an arena where we knew we could not be killed. The DM flat-out said 'there's no point,' whereas I think the player would have been a lot happier to roll it and have the NPC laugh in his face.

Spawnbroker

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys! I'm definitely taking some of the things you said into consideration. I actually bought this neat little package of stuff that had four character sheets in it with a bunch of little cards that say things like "At-Will Power", "Utility Power", "Encounter Power" etc. I think these will help the players realize how they work better if they just have a stack of cards with powers on it. I think that will help them out a lot on the road to realizing what they do and don't have in every battle.

DragonPup

As for the healer bit, any 'Leader' class(aka Warlords, Clerics, Bards, Shamans) can heal a group effectively. My D&D party has 5 other players and I manage to keep them healed playing an Inspiring Warlord. I would explain to the new players the general class roles(Striker, Defender, Leader, Controller) and how they help the party, and advise that they probably want at least 1 of each.

Metalbourne

Willeth wrote: »

Above all, if they think of something cool, try and let them do it. Don't say 'that wouldn't work' - make up a check, let them try and beat it, and if it IS impossible, give them a reason why they failed. We had a session recently where a player wanted to intimidate a character during combat, in an arena where we knew we could not be killed. The DM flat-out said 'there's no point,' whereas I think the player would have been a lot happier to roll it and have the NPC laugh in his face.

One time we got this game together, everyone made characters, and we made our way to a crypt outside of town. In a room full of bones, a skeleton animates itself and grabs onto a friend across the room. My character is a monk, carrying no weapons and relying on his finely honed skills I decide he should do the only thing he can:

"He picks up a nearby skull and kicks it at the skeleton like a soccer ball!"

"That wouldn't work"

Unanimous groans around the table and three minutes later we were playing xbox. Two hours of work wasted because of a shitty DM.

Willeth

Wow, that just shows ignorance of the rules. Improvised weapons have been in for forever and it's his own fault if he hasn't fleshed out his world enough to know if the skull would react to that or not.

Yeah. Don't do that.

Spawnbroker

Yeah so the game ended up not happening, which bums me out. Next up: How to not keep my friends from backing out at the last minute without prior warning!

Willeth

Take them dice shopping. Dice are just cool things to own, and they'll want to use them.

Or minis, but maybe not at this stage. Also, a tip I completely forgot about earlier - use gummi bears for enemies. You kill one, you get to eat it.

MuddBudd

As far as playing area goes, I direct you to check out Battlemats. (or find something similar). They're flexible, easily transported, and you draw on them with dry erase markers. Just spray them down with some windex or even water when you are done.

We use one of these and its great. We have the map in the center and then can write down whatever numbers we need, initiative lists, etc... along the edges. Our DM usually lets us draw out the map and then places his monsters where he wants, which sounds like it would be a huge advantage for the players but he likes to use knockback effects a lot and we usually can't resist water/lava hazards wherever possible, so it usually bites us in the ass.

Sipex

All good advice here, something of my own to add.

Use tropes extensively. New players are familiar with tropes and they make a game recognisably epic.

Also, remember the rule of cool. I can't remember the exact wording (someone else have it?) but it basically states, if a player wants to do something cool and it's not horridly unbalancing, let them do it (and give them on the fly bonuses or something).

Doctorstrongbad

You could try playing music for your game. Happy stuff for in town and up beat when moving about. Save the best stuff for normal combat or Boss encounters.

AlyceInWonderland

Willeth wrote: »

Take them dice shopping. Dice are just cool things to own, and they'll want to use them.

Or minis, but maybe not at this stage. Also, a tip I completely forgot about earlier - use gummi bears for enemies. You kill one, you get to eat it.

Spawnbroker, we need to do this. At least just once.





I love gummie bears.

Willeth

It works great. We have a guard captain in the main town called Theodore, because when we first encountered him he was an orange gummi bear in battle and we started referring to him as Captain Ted.

If you get a variety pack, you can have things like giant spiders or snakes that take up four squares.

SideAffects

Sipex wrote: »

Use tropes extensively. New players are familiar with tropes and they make a game recognisably epic.

What are tropes? I thought that tropes were like way overdone plot devices and characters that are unoriginal?

Aldo

SideAffects wrote: »

Sipex wrote: »

Use tropes extensively. New players are familiar with tropes and they make a game recognisably epic.

What are tropes? I thought that tropes were like way overdone plot devices and characters that are unoriginal?

No, you're thinking of clichés.

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite". In other words, dull and uninteresting.

(from tvtropes.org)

SideAffects

I still don't understand. When I look through the list of tropes at tvtropes.org for D&D, it looks like a big list of cliches to me. Things like a Mary Sue character or a Take up the Father's Sword backstory...

I don't mean to come across as argumentative; I'm just trying to understand since I'm about to start my own D&D campaign for my younger brothers in the near future, and I'm a beginner DM as well

Aldo

SideAffects wrote: »

I still don't understand. When I look through the list of tropes at tvtropes.org for D&D, it looks like a big list of cliches to me. Things like a Mary Sue character or a Take up the Father's Sword backstory...

I don't mean to come across as argumentative; I'm just trying to understand since I'm about to start my own D&D campaign for my younger brothers in the near future, and I'm a beginner DM as well

It's a fine line, basically.

But in general, there's nothing wrong with writing stories using tropes that have been used before. After all, after thousands of years of story telling, there's that point in time that a completely and 100% original story becomes impossible. There will always be things in there that have been in stories before.

DVG

Do you have a hobby lobby or similar store nearby?

You can make your own minis grid for pretty cheap by buying

• A Big piece of Foam Core Board (Some will even have squares on it to use as a guideline later)
• A sheet of press-on laminate
• A permanant marker
• A large straight edge

Simply draw on the grid in 1x1 inch squares, press on the laminate, then draw as needed with a Vis a Vis or similar wet-erase marker (Dry erase should work too, but gets erased too easily).

If you want to go the extra mile, once the laminate is on, cut the board up into smaller sections using jigsaw-style connections, and you have yourself a large map you can pre-draw and lay out as necessary (there used to be a produced product called Tact-Tiles that were essentially this, but the company went under).

You could probably make the map for as little as $10.

Sipex

Tropes are a fine line but in the end they are recognisable things that are easy to relate to.

A corrupt political figure is a trope for example, the PCs might speculate that he/she is corrupt then feel awesome once they reveal it.