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[DnD 4e] DMs- Help a naga out!
Gavin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Well good sirs, the time has come for me to step up in my regular DM's place and run a campaign for my friends while he's in Guatemala. Honestly, my regular DM is pretty awful at almost every aspect of the position, but I have to admit, after putting myself in his shoes, I'm finding more sympathy for his generally un-prepared blunder of an adventure.
I have my concept, and I think it's a pretty good one at that, but, I'm just... sooooo overwhelmed.
The process of creating an entire world leaves me entirely strung out and unorganized, with various bits of concept strewn about in various places.
Please, any experienced DMs, it's my first time trying to create a campaign of my own, where do I start?
What I need is advice on things to do first, next, and last, and anything helpful in between.
As far as the actual mechanics of running a game, I'm largely prepared...
Let the DM wisdom fall.
I have my concept, and I think it's a pretty good one at that, but, I'm just... sooooo overwhelmed.
The process of creating an entire world leaves me entirely strung out and unorganized, with various bits of concept strewn about in various places.
Please, any experienced DMs, it's my first time trying to create a campaign of my own, where do I start?
What I need is advice on things to do first, next, and last, and anything helpful in between.
As far as the actual mechanics of running a game, I'm largely prepared...
Let the DM wisdom fall.
Gavin on
0
Posts
i) Never create more than you have to.
If you're DMing for the first time, lean as hard on the stuff in the core rulebooks as you can. Don't worry about coming up with new cultures, deities, or whatever, just use what's there. The hour you come up with making a version of Avandra with red hair could be better spent making up a dungeon or something. Another trick is to play on stereotypes - everyone knows what the gruff dwarven smith is. You can either play it straight, or change one thing to make that character stand out.
The archetypal D&D starting location is a small town with a dungeon in a relatively docile wilderness location nearby. This is a really good idea for a new DM. As long as there's some vague reason for the PCs to go to the dungeon (look up quests in the DMG), you have a very small amount of prep work to do: come up with a questgiver, describe an overview of the town, and the dungeon. connect the dots, and that's an adventure.
Commensurate with rule i above, don't worry about much more than that for the first session. At the most, have a name for the kingdom if any the town is in. You don't need to worry about who the local lord is, unless he's giving out the quest. He has guards, great. They're guards.
Once you have a quest and a town, it's time for your dungeon. The trick to dungeons is that they're basically flow-charts in maxima. That is, your map is really just circles where stuff happens (rooms) with lines connecting them and making travel possible (corridors.) Pick a level 1 enemy out of the MM. Now get ready to use that enemy at most 3 times, and that's your dungeon.
What you want to do is make that enemy show up a few times, and make each time really interesting. Older versions of D&D used to be monster in a box is an okay encounter, but to be honest, it's really boring. The DMG has some good tips on how to mix up encounters, but terrain and mixing up the monsters is the easiest way to do it.
Basically, when you sit down to do an encounter, you will have an xp budget. At level 1, this is 100 xp times the number of PCs. You pay for enemies and traps out of that budget, like you're playing Warhammer or something. If 3 minions count for 75 xp, then you only have 325 xp left in a 400 xp budget. Try and pick monsters that do interesting things together. For example, a rat might have a bite that inflicts penalties on Reflex defenses; another creature can take advantage of that with attacks that work against Reflex defenses. Pro DM tip: there's nothing saying you can't use a creature's stats for a totally different looking creature. Ie: if you're working with kobolds but this one goblin would fit really well, just call it a kobold and make it look like a kobold in game. As long as you don't say it's using goblin tactics all the time, no one will know.
In 4e, you want to have larger, tactical encounters instead of multiple small ones. Expect a given encounter to take about an hour of play; your goal is to make quality encounters over quantity ones. Treasure's also a topic of some note. In the DMG is a section on treasure packages, which are sort of a budget for stuff that drops. Follow those to the letter. You can mix and match them to a limited degree - like if the lord of Foreststan is going to give them 75g for clearing out the local kobolds, then you can just make a 25g treasure out of a 100g one to make it all match. But, in the end, your PCs should have no more and no less than what's there. At your level, magic items are the big rewards, so space those out.
A skill challenge is the other thing you might want to put in a dungeon. This is when the PCs aren't directly fighting something but have to make a number of skill checks to unlock a door or figure out a puzzle or something. It's a nice break from stab stab. With these, you want to look for the DMG update on Wizards' website, as the guidelines have changed significantly.
Once the characters have finished their first dungeon, then you've reached your first of what I call break points. These are natural places in the game to examine how things are going, for both you and the players, and to change or stop the game if necessary. Only after you've decided to continue with the game do you want to expand upon that. Maybe the PCs stay around in Bumblefuckton for awhile then head to the capital at level 2. Maybe they just take a tour of little hamlets with big problems. Whatever the choice, there's no point in designing a whole kingdom that might not get used yet.
Does that make sense for how you sort of narrow it down into something workable for a single session?
Keep the story simple and it will grow naturally as you react to what the PCs do. If your story is too complicated to survive player contact, you should be writing a novel, not running an adventure.
Steal liberally from this guy for barebones plots:
36 Basic Plots
(It's ok to steal from him because he stole it all anyways)
Edit: I JUST figured out your thread title. sigh....
A) Doing large story-based play is more complicated from a preparation perspective.
C) It can also be difficult to get the players and DM accustomed to the flow and give of the group with quick story. People are still getting used to their characters, you're still getting used to responding to them, you need to establish a sort of baseline before altering it.
If you're really dead set on running a story, it might be a good idea to do it after a simple site-based adventure like I described above, just so you can learn the reins before really starting to gallop. Don't worry about running out of time for your grand plan; to be honest, a lot of DMs appreciate time that they don't have to spend behind the screen figuring everything out for everyone else.
1. Find out the level of the party and choose a starting location.
2. Go to Monster Manual page 284-287 "Monsters by Level", and look for two interesting soldier or skirmisher monsters of level -1 to level +1. Think of some reason these monsters would be a threat to the party or the starting location.
3. Go to Dungeon Master's Guide page 194 (in "Random Encounters") and follow the "Encounter Deck" directions. Choose monsters based on your monster choice from 2. with a few weird monsters thrown in for fun. This will give you a pile of monsters of different roles and of different levels.
4. Follow the "Generating Encounters" section from page 194-195 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. That should give you about 10 encounters. 5-8 of them will be good, but you'll keep all of them in reserve for surprises.
5. Choose a "villain monster" and insert him into one of the encounters. Call this one the boss fight.
5. Make a simple dungeon map. You can use the "Random Dungeons" if you want. If you just make a series of connected rooms (or clearings or buildings) between 6x8 to 10x10 squares, you'll be good. Come up with one simple outdoor fight map, 25x25 with a patch of difficult terrain on it somewhere. Have eight simple rooms prepared.
6. Plug your encounters into the maps. One of your encounters should be the boss-type fight. Put that one near the end.
7. Whip up a simple plot that sends the party towards the dungeon. "The monsters are attacking! They are coming from over here."
This should last for at least two sessions, if not four. It will probably take about 3 hours to prepare the first time you do it, but then one hour to prepare once you're in the zone. That's 3 hours prep for approximately 15 play, not bad.
2) How often will you be running your game? (Once a week? Once every month?) And how long will each session last?
I ask because if you are DM'ing specifically because your friend is around, you want a plotline that can be concluded before he leaves. It will both give a guideline to the size and scope of the campaign and leave the players with a sense of accomplishment when the time does come for your friend to leave.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
He'll be gone for about a month, but I don't plan on finishing the campaign just because he's back, I would let it keep going if it was going well. My goal is about once a week, giving me about a week to prepare in between sessions.
You say that I should avoid making a lot of interesting locale and such, but that actually is a part of the experience that sounds most exciting to me. Is it a bad idea to spend a lot of time on details if I have fun doing it? Are they really not ever going to come up?
If you really want to get into doing detailing, look at my IC thread for the Forward Guard game in this forum. That's about as heavy as I've ever gone, and it's been effective so far (from my perspective, I don't know about what Pygmalion's views might be as a player.)
That said, there are a few caveats:
a) First and foremost, I'm running from a published setting. In some ways, my prep work is smaller than yours because I don't have to come up with everything from scratch, but on the other hand, I do a lot of cross-referencing and research.
b) It's a play-by-post game. This has the net effect of making definitions concrete and referenceable. I can do things like glossaries and the magic item post on page 5 because people can read through it at their own pace. On the other hand, the desire to foster good, quicker play discourages use of the active voice. Passive storytelling works better, and the end effect is less effective NPC roleplaying on my behalf. (With the exception of Vainrence, Herald Stormcrown and some of the soothsayers, I haven't been really happy with how NPCs are turning out, and I need to work on that.)
c) There are still tons of details that haven't come up in play. Why is the Atalara called the Atalara? What did destroy Castle Kilgrave? And that doesn't touch on the giant new wealth of information-as-economy the players have found for themselves in Arabel.
On your side of things however, you have some slightly different concerns:
1) You have to always keep action at the table running. Don't EVER EVER go off on an essay about any setting element. Period, especially if it's tertiary or background to the game at hand. I can get away with it because we're playing by slow text, but I wouldn't do it at a live table. Show, don't tell.
2) Because you don't have the luxury of spoiler tags, you work detail in by making quick references to it. Maybe a PC's history check includes a reference to the Six Wrath-Kings of Dragathmar or Nimrael's School of Buffoonery. Just mention it and let it drop unless they want to follow it.
3) You can say a lot of things without making new words. Place names like the Steaming Stream and Burning Wood say a lot, and mean a lot in and of themselves, and don't require much explanation. Similarly, by judiciously using real-world vocabulary, you can say different things about your setting. An arcanist is not a sorcerer is not a wizard is not a mage is not a witch, no matter the game rules. A really good way to kill your game is by talking in made-up fantasy language and insisting that everyone else does. People can wrap their heads and tongues around "the Golden Sceptre" better than they can "the Golden Azarleth." Setting engagement is something you aim for, but not something you can mandate.
4) Another really big thing to keep in mind is consistency. One of the hidden jobs of a DM is to be a continuity wizard. Usually this means making sure that one farmer doesn't say that the woods to the north are ash trees and someone else says they're oaks, then describing maples. Sometimes it may mean you usher a PC along with the rest of the party to facilitate storytelling. Whatever you're doing, make sure ideas in your setting are always consistent. Unless you have an awesome reason (you don't), sharptooths are goblins both north and south of the Wildmeet Mountains. When you foster consistency, you can build upon it to create shared meaning. The next time your PCs run into goblins you don't have to even say goblin - you can just say sharptooth and they'll remember last time.
5) On the topic of wielding vocabulary, you can make big inroads on meaning by saying the same things different ways. Pyre, bonfire, and blaze all mean large fire, but have different connotations about the fire's size, strength, and how it's being perceived. If you choose two or three different words and use them somewhat interchangeably to describe the same thing, it will be more distinct through the accrual of those connotations. You can also reverse this to benefit by including setting language words in those interchangeable name wheels. Sharptooths are not only goblins, but when you think sharptooth you think of dirty, disgusting goblins because they share those same connotations with the other goblin words you have. The final thing to keep in mind with regards to this is that using the same word over and over is boring. Open a novel and look at a page. Is he said she said or he shouted, she whispered more interesting?
6) A quick way to blow verisimilitude (old silly word you sometimes see come up in RPG gaming, it means the believability of the setting) is by not taking into account player knowledge. Don't feed them everything just because it's cool. What do they know simply by living where they live? What do they know with knowledge checks? What can be learned through found diary pages or magical memory orbs (cf. Bioshock or Doom 3)? Otherwise, zip about it.
As a final note, you're right that it's fun to come up with interesting places for the PCs to go and explore. But a lot of them will never ever ever get used. For every good idea a DM has that the PCs actually get to experiencing, two more end up stuffed in a backup notes drawer. They're the drivers, not you, and you show cool things off not by making them go places, but by making them want to go places. To some degree, your notes are tourist brochures with real dragons inside or something. So you don't want to go too far because you can easily waste tons of time on something you won't use at all.
Come up with four interesting villains, have a good set-up plot involving their antics, and give the players a series of Clues. As the players guess and interpret the Clues, modify the plot to use the most interesting idea the players come up with, and then stick the villain in there. It's great, and the only thing you really have to come up with on the fly are maps, and that's not that hard to do or steal.
Wrap the clues in encounters and you're almost home.
The Zephyr Campaign
This is the most ridiculous campaign I've read or seen. There's loads of paths and intricacies. The DM is one of the best I've seen around. I couldn't even start to make a campaign like this....but I damn sure will try one day.
Also, I know where you're coming from. Recently me and a bunch of my friends thought it would be fun to try out D&D, but nobody would DM it. So I stepped up to the plate. With a disclaimer: Look, this is my first time playing D&D much less being a DM. So go easy on me.
My tips are these:
1) Be Imaginative!: Give the enemies flavor. Instead of just saying "The goblin goes down" try something like, "[character] swings his greatsword around. The goblin looks around to make sure he is still standing and smirks. Yet just as he begins to laugh, a trickle of blood begins to run down from his neck, and his head slides off." Also, give the NPC's more personality than just being a ruffian in the local pub. Let the character know that this guy was doing something before they came into the pub, and he's going to do something after you leave...he's not just there to meet them.
2) Be prepared: For encounters and what not I like to write index cards for each monster. It has all the vital information: defenses, hp, movement, attacks, resistances, and any special things it does. I also like to include a couple other things, like XP it gives, as well as origin and a little appearance. Also, don't be caught off guard if the PC's don't do what you intended. If you wanted them to lockpick a wooden door, and they want to bust in, let them. Be ready to know what the door's AC is. And is there a consequence for not bursting it down? What happens on the inside if they do just crash in? It gives the players freedom, and they know that you can roll with the punches.
3) Adapt: Is the encounter going too easy? You could just make your rolls worse. or... maybe a spearthrower misses his target and it hits one of his own. Maybe an enemy unprepared falls into his own trap. On the same note, if things are going good, and a PC rolls a natural one on an enemy right next to an ally, I've made him roll damage on the ally. (He then made a bluff check against the ally's insight to tell him..."No, I totally hit the enemy." ...It succeeded.) This makes it fun and more accessible.
Above all, just have fun with it. That's what the game is for anyway.
PSN: ChemENGR
A mindset that I've been finding more and more useful is don't plan your RPG adventure story as if it's a 'story'. Stories are the sequence of meaningful events the protagonists chose to take to deal with the antagonists, and you don't have control over the PC's choice of actions. What you do have control over is the setting and the antagonists, so focus on creating locations with adventure hooks and antagonists with goals that make them do things the PCs will want to deal with and foil their plans.
Start at the bottom with a hook and build up from there, keeping it more amorphous and open-ended the further away your are from getting to that point. I'd say your first session should present a possible adventure that's self-contained and appears to have a straight-forward means to tackle ("You've just arrived at the town surrounding the Lord's castle and already you've heard that hobgoblins have been raiding the outlying villages, and there's a great reward for those who find their stronghold."). From there it's just a matter of charting out the flow of that one adventure and creating encounters & skill challenges to fit. Assuming they know the theme of the game is to go no adventures and not shrug and travel to the next town, that setup should cover a basic delve for a session or two.
To have room for an ongoing campaign, you'll need to think about motivations and what's going on when the PCs aren't around. Are the hobgoblins planning a fullscale war? Are they being manipulated by some scheming wizard with eyes on taking the throne? Creating this kind of general backdrop gives you a foundation to build more adventures; even if they don't complete the goals you laid out (or just do the bare minimum and head for another location) in what was intended to lead to the next part of the ongoing 'story', the antagonists are still doing stuff behind the scenes and have something they'll do that will bring conflict to the PCs.
Inevitably there's going to be a hobgoblin raid on the village they stop in next. Or they kidnap somebody important, or they start raiding with magical equipment and golems in tow that makes it clear something much bigger is behind this. Eventually that wizard is going to convince some dragon from the southern mountains to help seige the castle and have free-reign of the countryside, while he takes the tower keep for his own devices. Planning when, where, or how exactly these occur isn't important, as you'll be following their lead as to where they go and what they decide to pursue.
The players decide to go from point A to point B, you referee what obstacles make A to B challenging and narrate what they find at B. You got to have something that provides a lot of room to modify and expand; maybe they don't give a crap about a wizard who kidnaps somebody, but they say aloud they'd think it'd be cool tofind that dragon's old mountain lair and loot its horde. So you're basically stuck letting them search for the lair as their next adventure, as it's not an impossible or insane endeavor (like 'I want to jump through the keyhole'). What you can do is populate that new delve with entertaining encounters, and even add more hooks that lead back into the overarching conflict, in ways that play off their interests that have been expressed through their descisions and actions. If they find a clue that the wizard had persuaded the dragon to help his hobgoblin army, then they might feel compelled to deal with the wizard.
Sometimes you can't rope them into dealing with any of the antagonists or conflicts you had in mind, and they want to do something entirely different. Like fight Bullywugs. This is where you build another 1-session delve, learn to live with discarding the story you had in mind, and build a new story outline off the things they do in the new adventure, possibly cutting and pasting elements that went untouched from the old one. Maybe the bullywugs are under the employ of a scheming wizard...
I will just note that I am aiming to top donuts with the Cormyr game.
TV Tropes is there: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
Seriously, I can't think of a better resource to help brainstorm plots, narrative, characters, etc than TV Tropes.
I'm not... it was an annoying euphemisms back in wow and well... it still is.
rofl. wow... I don't know about that one. :U but thanks. o_o;
that won't be too hard, I'm not competing with anybody. ;p
edit: if I were to offer you any advice at all (and to make this post actually on-topic) I'd say the following, in bold. do not compare dms, ever. every dm plays the game, builds the game and directs the game differently. it's almost like an art in some ways. trying to model yourself after any one person is bad. going into DMing with the mindset that you want to "be better than" someone else? bad.
shitting on other DMs is a bad thing too, really. especially if you're looking for help to be one. everybody has ideas. making them into something remotely coherent enough for others to appreciate them takes time and effort. walk the walk before you say such things. seriously. but that's just my on-topic 2 cents.
These are wise words. One of the worst gaming instances I've ever had was when the GM said that our party had to go get the last piece to complete an artifact, and that an army of evil was going for the same thing. Well.. we thought, why go directly to it.. lets go ask the king for help, he owes us one. So we went to get on our boat. The GM then just told us the boat was gone. Just Gone. We would HAVE to go directly to it, which still made no sense to us. Well, that pretty much killed the game for most of us.
You HAVE to play to your players. Even if it means not going exactly by the original plan.
By the way, I wasn't trying to compete with you by way of my comment; just wanted to make the point to Ruper that I hope my own game is at least as good in terms of intrigue and depth.
I was saying that that was in reference to him saying "my regular DM is pretty awful at almost every aspect of the position."
To me it's kind of insulting that somebody would say that about somebody who invests the time to put the game together, even if you may find it to be deficient in some way. ;p
maybe he was joking? I don't know. looking at it now it was late for me and I didn't feel like editing for tone?
I don't think it's fair that I should have to worry about the principle or offensive nature of "shitting" on my old DM for being bad, when I'm saying that he is bad because he isn't prepared. He hasn't put the time or effort in at all, and that's the point. And I definitely have my feet plenty wet as a player and have directed campaigns before as a DM, as I said, as well as played with "good" DMs. Maybe you shouldn't compare style or convention, but certainly effort. What I was asking for was advice on how to prepare something large scale from concept to adventure.