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Need Help - New to D&D!!!
.red
caffeine IV DripCanadaRegistered User regular
caffeine IV DripCanadaRegistered User regular
So, a bunch of my buddies and I have decided to finally try D&D. We're all first timers, and we each took a roll in our planned adventure. There was a total of 6 of us - 5 players, and the DM. It's supposed to take place this Saturday, and we've all read up on our parts (players reading their respective guides, the DM his). However, this week, the DM came down with the flu and it seems like he won't be good for this Saturday.
Normally, we'd cancel the whole event outright, but two of our party members are going back to their dorms in different cities after this weekend (one in fact, another province out right) and we'd at least like to kick start one D&D session just to get an idea of how it'd go. So, my question is this:
In light of the original DM being sick, and having read a bit of the DM manual out of curiosity - Is it possible for me to salvage this planned night and jump in as the temp DM for this session? If so, any advice on what I should know when it comes to DM'ing? I'm good with a story for the adventure I have in mind and I'd have no problem narrating it, but I'm more worried about the mechanics that comes with being a DM. Any advice much appreciated; we'd really like to pull this off if at all possible.
Normally, we'd cancel the whole event outright, but two of our party members are going back to their dorms in different cities after this weekend (one in fact, another province out right) and we'd at least like to kick start one D&D session just to get an idea of how it'd go. So, my question is this:
In light of the original DM being sick, and having read a bit of the DM manual out of curiosity - Is it possible for me to salvage this planned night and jump in as the temp DM for this session? If so, any advice on what I should know when it comes to DM'ing? I'm good with a story for the adventure I have in mind and I'd have no problem narrating it, but I'm more worried about the mechanics that comes with being a DM. Any advice much appreciated; we'd really like to pull this off if at all possible.
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Some groups like the roleplaying aspect, and like being "in character" and talking up a storm. They like the story and drama, and would love to stick around and explore interesting characters.
Some groups like the combat, and placing the little pieces on the map, and maneuvering the toy soldiers around. They like rolling dice to figure out conflict resolution.
Some groups simply like the fellowship, the shared activity as a group. There's lots of bullshitting and off-topic conversations.
You will probably engage in all three of these things when running the game. Each group has a different emphasis on what they like the best out of the game, and part of your job as a GM is to interpret this and run the game so that everyone enjoys it. Note that many players will tell you "But I like all of that!" Well, of course, they do. But you can easily see when they like certain aspects MORE. If they stand up when they roll their dice and pace around the table, they are interested in the rolls and the strategy.
Some short tips:
Be prepared! Have stats ready for all the key elements of your adventure, NPCs, treasure, etc. It's easy to "just wing it" when you are experienced, but when you are new, I highly encourage you to have everything written down. I often suggest to new GMs to write things on notecards, separate notecards for each creature, treasure, and non-player character. This way, if a player wants to take a closer look, they can.
Be flexible! You may have a story, but the players are often encouraged to seek out their own stories. Some players may go way out of the bounds of what you have prepared. In this case, RUN WITH IT. Maybe they start a barfight accidentally. Play it out, make the rolls. If they all get knocked out, or killed, have them dumped at the nearest temple, sore and healing, then move them along in the adventure.
Be rewarding! I'm not just talking about loot here. You need to acknowledge each person's contribution to the team and the story. Write down a quick note if someone cracks a great joke. At the end of the adventure, give that player a bit of XP and recap about the funny joke. Same thing with people who make outstanding rolls (killing an opponent in one hit) or fumbling really badly. Terrible events can be just as memorable (and funny in retrospect) as good events. If someone does something awesome or boneheaded, write it down! Then bring it up later, along with an XP award. I often keep track of things like kill count, extremely high dice rolls (rolling "perfects" on all dice), fumbles, etc. Stat tracking is fun in video games, and it can also be fun in RPGs, too, if you make some notes. I also like for the team to vote on an MVP by secret ballot (using notecards, again). They write their name on the top, the person they are nominating, and why they are nominating that person. You can give XP to biggest contributor, or to all the people mentioned, it's up to you.
Be accommodating! Make sure everyone has something useful to do. The worst games in our group is when one or two people just sit around and do nothing the entire session, when they WANT to play in their heart of hearts (this happens even in groups of experienced gamers). Think ahead of time of ways you can incorporate each character into the story. Don't shoehorn them in, but just have these ways prepared in case the players need a gentle nudge to discover their character.
Don't be afraid to cut content! This goes with being flexible. Sometimes the players spend a LOT of time doing inconsequential things that don't move the game along. This quickly leads to boredom if you don't move things along. If there's a long way to the next far event, don't be afraid to use a montage sequence or fast traveling to cut corners to make it to the next interesting setpiece.
For DnD in particular, carry some note cards or sticky notes. When it comes to combat, write down the names of each participant on a separate card. When you roll initiative, lay down the cards in order on the table. Then, you can easily see at a glance who is supposed to go next. Since most combats go for several rounds, and most sessions have multiple combats, you can reuse the cards throughout the session. You can also use the index cards or sticky notes to note bonuses/penalties that are on that particular participant. Just slide the card under the miniature, or place it next to the drawing, or stick the note near the character (whatever you are using).
I typically recommend folks to use a dry erase board instead of minis, as it's easier to simply draw out the terrain/dungeon. But use whatever you feel comfortable with. Don't worry too much about high art skills, as people fill in the blanks pretty easily when they are playing RPGs.
Don't argue about the rules! You are the GM. Deal with situations fairly, and quickly, and say "Look, I don't know the specifics of the ruling here, but I'd like to move things along. We can look it up later and make house rules about it if you'd like."
Also, read through the adventure you're running several times until you've pretty much memorized each piece of it (not verbatim descriptions, but you know each place the story is supposed to go and how it's supposed to get there). You want to know where the adventure is supposed to be heading so you can keep your party pointed in that direction without being hamfisted about it.
For Players:
The point of the game isn't to win, it’s to have fun. A spectacular loss is better than a boring win.
You control your character, they don’t control you. What I mean by this is that a lot of times people will say something like “My character wouldn’t group with these people” or “my character wouldn’t be interested in this mission.” Don’t. Stay in character, but find a way to make them stay with the group or make them interested in the mission.
On a similar note, stay in character. In your character’s world, they can’t see the numbers or the stats, sometimes they’ll maybe do things (even in combat!) that don’t make a lot of sense…but feel right to the character.
Don’t split up the party. This means don’t wander off away from the group, and don’t let other people, either.
For DMs:
Your job isn’t to kill the party, and it also isn’t to give them everything they want. It’s to give them a canvas on which they can paint their story. Usually this means challenge them…but you aren’t their enemy, you’re another storyteller along with them.
Don’t penalize creativity. If a player says “I search the under the desk and in the top drawer”, then act as if they’ve searched the desk as well. If anything, just give them a bonus to things in the top drawer and under the desk.
Like someone above me said, don’t try to find every rule…let them do things on the fly and just come up with a roll for it. Attacks or skills are a D20 plus a number.
Other than that, just know your session well and a few rules you know you'll need. I also threw in a puzzle that both the players and the characters had to solve in my first session, which turned out to be a really good thing...gave everyone a break from looking up rules. If you want to steal mine verbatim I'm fine with that...the characters had to cross a bridge onto a floating castle (no other way to get on at that level). Every time they got to the middle of the bridge, they saw a flash of light, and then ended up at the beginning of the bridge again. The solution they had to find was to close their eyes as they crossed the bridge. Stuff I had to deal with on the fly was "I walk backwards" and "I watch someone crossing the bridge". I dealt with those by "It doesn't work (I almost let it)" and "They go into a trance and slowly walk backward from the center of the bridge." Use any part or all or none of that as you will, but I found it good to have a puzzle (ymmv of course).
Officially speaking, the online character builder and online compendium are not rules sources. What this means is that whatever is written in the most recently printed book (or most recently released Update document) is the official rule, not what the character builder or OC says.
There's no reason not to use the OC, just don't let it be the final say in your understanding of the rules. A Rules Compendium is a valuable buy. It's relatively small, handy, and the index/ToC are both well organized to help you find whatever you're looking for.
You should also absolutely build your characters on paper "by hand." I've seen way too many people who used the online CB and ended up not really knowing how their powers and class features worked, because the CB truncates, abbreviates, and flat out changes the formats of things when it builds a sheet. Do the math by hand, it will not only ensure it's correct, it will also help you master the system more quickly.
I thought the Character Builder was pretty regularly updated with rules changes and what not?
I think it's best to build by hand then plug it in. I've seen TONS of stuff get missed when people only did their characters by hand.
Which is why you check, and double check.
Seriously, building characters by hand is not a thing. Characters have been built by hand since D&D started, somehow things have worked out.
It's not what most people want to hear, but you really need the books to play the game. Even if you buy them at a used book store (like I have for most of the books I own), you really need to be able to read the rules for stuff. 4th edition is pretty significantly different from any other edition of D&D, and knowing how the game works is very, very important to having an accurate experience with the game.
Also @Esh, no, the character builder is not updated as often as it ought to be. Case in point, the Keen weapon still exists in there, despite never actually being printed in anything and not being anywhere near legal.
I'm referring more to human error. I see people do their math/forget something all the time. It doesn't hurt to plug your character back through the builder at all. I'm only advocating it as a supplement.
Oh yeah no issues there, although the DM should be reviewing sheets to make sure all the math is good and everything is legit anyway. No I have no issues with the CB as a secondary tool, but I've run into way too many people who rely on it with primacy and that's bad.
You can just a One shot session to see how it goes... and also give yourself a chance to see how it feels to be in a DM chair.
There's also D&D by skype or video conference. My current group has one guy in Texas and we play with him that way if you are worried about your two other friends not being able to get into the action some other time.
You can also look at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage for some ideas... but beware.
After you've played the game enough to know whether or not you like it, invest in a three ring binder and some of those 8.5"X11" clear plastic envelope things for it. When you have your character sheet made, put the sheets in the binder. Mark temporary bonuses and damage with a thin tip magic marker and mark used powers by crossing them off with same. When you recover something, wipe off the x or whatever mark you've made. When you go up a level, reprint and replace. D&D games can generate a lot of paper, and this keeps everything for each PC in one place. It's also a great way to keep track of which encounter/daily powers you've used. It also lets you carry your character to and from sessions. If you have no shame and just want to run with your nerdiness (and you absolutely should), get all table-scapey with it and decorate the covers of the binder with pictures/the characters name and deeds in your own approximation of Ye Olde Englysh Scrypt/whatever. Cheap (less than $5 from the dollar store), practical, fun and reusable. You can't beat that.
For DMs:
Early on, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffinMcGuffins are your friend, especially if you have inexperienced players. By their very nature, any character type could have an interest in them.They're also "disposable" and won't leave dangling plot threads if you or the PCs decide to change narrative directions. A great one for a low level D&D adventure is a Staff of Healing with only two or three charges left hidden in the tomb of a long dead cleric on "the outskirts of town". The tomb has been over run by goblins/undead/bandits/whoever (the enemies are too dumb to use the staff, naturally but do a good job of keeping locals out) and is "beneath the notice" of more powerful adventurers, so it's not going anywhere. The mayor of the town has a kid who is sick with a powerful disease and only the staff can cure it. The staff also won't imbalance early games too much, or for very long even if it does. It might actually help the PCs out of some of the tight spots than can sometimes characterize low-level D&D, as long as they don't burn through all the charges. It will also fit in most pre-generated dungeons and keeps the "scope" of early adventures limited. It's kind of a buzz kill, but that's important for three reasons. The first is that, early on, you'll be trying lots of narrative elements and not all of them will work. If they're fairly localized (initially), they're easier to drop or expand. To return to the tomb example, maybe the cleric was a member of a powerful order that has vanished. If this is something the players respond to, have them find (for example) scrolls from the order with the cleric's body explaining the location of a lost abbey. If they don't, forget about the order (it was just window dressing anyway) and try something else. Maybe during the "boss fight", the PCs defeat and subdue an emissary from an evil nation trying to get the baddies in the tomb to join his war effort against the PCs home? Eventually, as they become more experienced and get a better idea of who their characters are and what they want, the players will begin directing the campaign more and more. The second reason is that a lot of games get bogged down early on with details about deities, cosmology, The Forces That Drive The Universe (TM), etc. that the PCs can't impact in any way (yet!). This stuff is fun for DMs to create, but since the players can't really do anything with/about them it's only really fun for 1/5th of the group. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you have nowhere to go. If the PCs have caught their deities (or anyone's deities for that matter) attention by level six or seven, what are they supposed to be doing at level 30?
That's a lot of text for one dork's two cents! Remember, it's you and the groups game and anything that helps make the game more fun for everyone involved is awesome. Other stuff is superfluous. Good luck with your game and let us know how it goes.
Eh, I think the whole three ring binder with printed character sheets is overrated. I use 4" x 6" index cards and just write everything down on those. I use one for basic character information, ability scores, defenses, speed, skills, passives, hit points, surges, all that generic stuff. I have another that I document gear, loot, and feats and class features on (and also track gold and XP).
Then I break down my powers and write them down on index cards, divided up by type of power. I go ahead and do all the math as I'm transcribing the power (So "Attack: Str vs AC, Hit: 2[w] + Str" becomes "+14/AC; 2d8 + 6" for instance). I document any effects or other things the power does, as well as the action type and relevant keywords/damage types. It also doesn't hurt to jot down where the power is from (book and page number, and whether or not the power has been updated) in case there's a question about it later.
I use checkboxes to represent things like Action Points and daily power usage. Just a little circle. Strike through it when you use the power, then when you take a rest or regain it erase the strike (or redraw the circle if you need to).
It's cheap, handmade, and very effective for me. It also allows you to sort things in a way that's most intuitive for you, and you can write stuff out that might normally not be written out, which is especially helpful if you have trouble remembering that, for instance, your druid has damage resist while in beast form. Oh, yeah, and it fits nicely in the front cover of my Rules Compendium.
edit: Also, the Critical Failures board has a lot of online games running, several of which are D&D, and Social Entropy ++ has a discussion thread going here
I recommend doing a little side adventure with your characters sidekicks or pets or whatever, that you don't have to take too seriously unless something awesome happens and you all later want to, rather than risk screwing up anything in the campaign "canon".
Eg: Did you wipe out a goblin tribe 3 sessions ago? Well do a little 1-2 part adventure with some of the survivors seeking "justice".
In the campaign I used to play, all the party had "apprentices" picked up here and there during the campaign, who occasionally accompanied the party, were used by the DM for plot points and background/world-building, and were generally given some moderate twinking. The idea was that if your guy was irrecoverably dead, you'd have a ready-to-go replacement who had some narrative link to the campaign. A mini-adventure with these guys was a fairly frequently used entertaining way to take a break from the main campaign thread, and a nice way to enjoy some lower level play in a way that still contributed towards our overall campaign goals. And we did occasionally use them to let other people DM a session for a change, with the agreement being that the session wasn't "canon" unless we all wanted it to be at the end (The prevents the "'Dancing Longsword Of Ultimate Slaying +6 But Only Usable By Half-Elf Rogues Called Jim' as loot when Jim was running the session" syndrome)
I rolled Rogue, my two other buddies went warlord and paladin. The paladin couldn't roll worth shit (which we made fun of numerous times), which was hilarious the few times we needed that important AC roll - can't even recall the number of times our buddy screwed up on Hammer and Anvil as well.
Anyway, we're hosting another one in a week (the other two guys are actually coming back to town - the one schooling in Quebec has an interview for a summer position so he wants to comeback for the weekend), which means we'll be hosting the session on Friday. Also, we ran into a few problems/confusions the night before so I'll bring that up later in the day (or week) - I'm in a rush, gotta run out the door so I can't read through all the comments but I'll try and get back on any of your suggestions.
Thanks for the time and effort guys (: