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[D&D 3.5] First Time DM
Sanguine_Voyeur
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
...and I'm not sure where to start.
I know of a few people that are interested in playing, and I'm in college. It won't be hard to find more players if need be. I have access to a good amount of 3.5 books and a friend with many more.
My biggest problem is that, being a college student, I don't have time to hand craft a world and campaign. I'm not confident or skilled enough as a DM to wing it every week. I don't want to rely on varying modules, that wouldn't create any sort of depth and would be sort of disjointed and irrelevant.
What do I do?
I know of a few people that are interested in playing, and I'm in college. It won't be hard to find more players if need be. I have access to a good amount of 3.5 books and a friend with many more.
My biggest problem is that, being a college student, I don't have time to hand craft a world and campaign. I'm not confident or skilled enough as a DM to wing it every week. I don't want to rely on varying modules, that wouldn't create any sort of depth and would be sort of disjointed and irrelevant.
What do I do?
Sanguine_Voyeur on
0
Posts
Go look into their adventure paths. They are of good quality and designed to be essentially "a campaign in a box".
Additionally looking around on their forums you should find plenty of first hand experiences from people who ran/played them to let you know where they might be a little "off".
However, I have another potential issue. One of my players has played before in a more overpowered campaign. He's used to having all his stats 14 minimum with at least one a 20 plenty of gold to roll around in. That's not the problem though. I'm using a standard point buy system, and he set him self up with all 10's, a 6, and one 20, from racial modifiers.
My concern is that he's going to think he'll be strong, but will actually be weak or average, causing frustration. This frustration will be directed at me and could lead to conflict, making it harder for the new players to fully enjoy the game and possibly halting the campaign and any future endeavors with the group.
I'll attempt to reason with him, but what do I do if he does end up under powered and angry? The most apparent solution would to let him make another character on par with the others, but this could arouse such sentiments as, 'why bother, it'll be under powered too.'
As a suggestion of what to do... I'd say it depends. What kind of reaction do you expect? Like, angry, "it's all your fault my guy is bad" kind of thing? I'd say be tough now, tell him his character is going to suck and that he needs to redo his stats. Obviously though, you can't do that if he's gonna be all passive-aggressive about it.
I don't expect a sudden reaction so much as a slow, pent up rage. Eventually, it may lead him to quit.
I'd bring up the point that if he's got a 20, a 6, and a bunch of 10s, his character is effectively a savant in something, barely functional in something, and otherwise perfectly average. If he doesn't want to be average, he needs to be better than average at almost everything, not just super at one thing.
Also: Tell him it sounds like he doesn't really want to play your brand of D&D and can find another group if he doesn't like the rules.
As far as the game itself, I'd recommend getting a campaign setting, whatever one sounds interesting to you. That way you don't have to make up every single aspect of the game world, which can get really tiring. And, have the players come up with some kind of backstory, particularly some npc's they would know in the world, and the reason they have for adventuring. You can adapt whatever they come up with to whatever part of the world you're using, it'll help them feel more invested in their characters, and you'll already have a bunch of plotlines you can mine for ideas, as well as npc's the characters actually care about. Just make sure they don't all pick 'my parents were killed, i'm taking revenge', or 'amnesia'.