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Okay, so I'm in the midst of my first D&D campaign.. DMing.. And I'm having a few small frustrations with all the pranks being pulled on each other (which have now been told to everyone to calm down), as well as some other stuff that is temporarily fixed.

But in any case, are there any D&D DMs out there that have any tips for a first-time DM to improve?

Keep them distracted and doomed 24/7, first off the comedy is funnier when they tink their charaters are going to die. Second inter-personal conflicts get limited when they are constantly battling for their lives.

Third get about thirty pages staple them togther at the spine then hook a fishing line to one edge. Write on the cover in big black letters PLOT and when they get to distracted use it on them. Wait that idea sounded so much better last night.

The sad part? With the way dice rolls have been going lately, they WILL die. By their own hands!

Don't start off with a grand plot arc; give a few one-offs to get an idea of the characters and let them show what they like doing. Then build up the arc based on that. Use recurring characters. And remember; if you have a screen or other way of concealing your dice, any hit that kills them puts them at 1 or -1, depending on how dire you want to make it. Killing them without giving them a chance isn't fun. If they sacrifice themselves, it's their own damn doing.

SirNitram wrote:Don't start off with a grand plot arc; give a few one-offs to get an idea of the characters and let them show what they like doing. Then build up the arc based on that. Use recurring characters. And remember; if you have a screen or other way of concealing your dice, any hit that kills them puts them at 1 or -1, depending on how dire you want to make it. Killing them without giving them a chance isn't fun. If they sacrifice themselves, it's their own damn doing.

The sad thing is, I was kindasorta put into the plot arc I am doing now (which, trust me, is a pain in the ass on a grand scale). Put it this way, I get to 'rebuild' the Druids. -_-

As for dice rolls, well, right now we play at a fuckin' Denny's so yeah, screens are out of the question. Luckily, I'm not ending up DMing for a dozen players anymore. O.o (Don't ask how THAT happened.) The other thing is, in this campaign, I have to introduce the new big bad guy to a fairly brand spankin' new world.

haas mark wrote:As for dice rolls, well, right now we play at a fuckin' Denny's so yeah, screens are out of the question. Luckily, I'm not ending up DMing for a dozen players anymore. O.o (Don't ask how THAT happened.)

Been there. Done that. Have the 'Nam-esque flashbacks.

Well if you think the characters are liable to kill each other because of inter character conflict introduce a strong mentor character to keep everyone in line.

In my DnD group(one I wasn't dming) we had one player who insisted all his characters were "judges" personality wise and that he could kill anyone he thought was doing wrong. So first we relied on other players keeping him in line which resulted in usually my character killing his characters alot. I think in one campaign I killed four of his characters.

When I DMed my campaign to avoid any problems I had a very very strong boss character who oversaw the group. And anytime a character went out of line they got punished. The punishment varied depending on what the character did and how many times he fell out of line beforehand.

Careful with LongVin's suggestion. Many players strongly object to that sort of thing, seeing it as the DM trying to control them. It is very easy to play such an NPC abusively and take the fun out of the game for the players.

Players tend to make their own story. For this reason I don't suggest, past vague goals, plotting things out more than a session or two in advance. This lets you build off their actions instead of a DM I once had that did the Path of Least Resistance constantly to steer us along his campaign.

God that was annoying.

Yes. Railroading is bad. I don't even come up with more than a basic plot anymore. Good players will steer the story along themselves, and you can either go with the flow, planning only one or two sessions in advance, or you can constantly battle with them, trying to force them along your pre-determined path. If you choose option #1, they will think you're a genius for incorporating their ideas so integrally into the story, and you won't have to work nearly as hard.

EDIT: As far as player vs. player goes, it's really a judgement call. Some GMs go to excessive lengths to prevent it, others actively encourage it. I recently ran a campaign where the players tried to kill each other on two separate occassions. On the first occassion, it created a really fantastic session where everyone put their all into the roleplaying because the emotions were genuine, and they all loved it and were still friends afterward. On the second, everyone ended up bitter and pissed off with each other, and didn't want to speak to each other ever again. However, they later made up and it was probably better that it happened, since animosity had been slowly and quietly building, and the incident allowed them to get it all out and pave the way to play together peacefully in the future. The point is that PvP is inherently much more interesting than working together, and can create the best sessions, but it can also destroy a game, so be careful.

My best advice is to remember that its all about the balance. You don't ever want the players to get complacent (if things are too easy), or frustrated (if things are too difficult). Just make sure that the challenges they face are difficult, but not impossible. And remember, as DM you shouldn't get frustrated if they solve a problem in a way you don't expect. Remember, you're only one person, they're several, and they'll come up with unique ways to deal with a situation.

An excellent guide:

http://www.dragondogpress.com/unclefiggy/gm/

Yay for lots of responses! LOL.

LongVin:

We have enough inter-character conflict with just two of them, thanks, and that's all fine and well. Besides, we have enough of them dying off solely to failed dice rolls and saving throws. -_-

As for the 'judges,' well, I have a hard time getting someone who is playing a true neutral to stick to true neutral rather than seemingly trying to play chaotic evil, and I already told him nobody's changing alignment this campaign, because I'm already having a hard enough time with it just being my first time DMing.

As for strong boss characters, I've got two other DMs playing in the campaign having 'hired' all the other people in there, just to give everyone a generally easier time. And so far, that's worked.

Raxmei:

I suck at NPCs.

Gaidin:

Put it this way, there's a way that I want them to go, and they eventually go that way. If there's something I'm unfamiliar with, I don't let them go that way. That, and all I really do is pick out the monsters and generally let them do things, with my own little plots in my head, with what I want them to eventually do and come across.

Arthur_Tuxedo:

That would be why there are all of one or two people that have animals currently. Well, three, actually, now I think of it. But also why I generally only come up with the monsters, and let them go the way they will, but eventually having them hit the places I want them to go.

On PVP, well, yeah, they'll kill each other before they kill a monster, with all the ones and twos and threes they roll. >.>

Defiant:

This is why the only alignment I'm currently missing is Lawful Good (I think). Also why I've temporarily banned thieves, fighters and people of neutral alignments. If they come up with something I haven't thought of, then all the better, I generally tend to have a Plan B.

PrinceofLowLight:

Thanks for the link, I'll be sure to check it out.

haas mark wrote:I suck at NPCs.

Then ask for some, we can produce some.
Who cares if some other DM invented them and the group they belonged to some other DM across the country?

Like they will know!

Mr Bean wrote:

haas mark wrote:I suck at NPCs.

Then ask for some, we can produce some.
Who cares if some other DM invented them and the group they belonged to some other DM across the country?

Like they will know!

I suck at PLAYING them, not coming up with them.

haas mark wrote: I suck at PLAYING them, not coming up with them.

No you don't. What you need to do, and will sooner or later, is grow used to playing them. And I have just a few tips to get you started.

1. Consider the focus. In essence, how important is this NPC to the story, how much is she in the spotlight? The question is valid because the players will always by necessity be main characters in your narrative. That's not to say that supporting characters can't be important; the Emperor and Vader were supporting characters by this model. But it does mean that you don't begin by depicting them as insanely complex or go on a ten-minute introductory monologue. Every character should be memorable, but the random barkeep doesn't necessarily have to be more than that.
   
   Not at first, anyway. Characters always evolve, after all.
2. Pick a handful of descriptory traits -- three or four is just enough, while five is generally too much unless the character is quite important. A visiting dignitary might have pale eyes, a short black beard, and a tendency to rub his fingers along his jaw. A few clear traits will fix the character in your memory, and help the players remember him. Of course, the character has many other traits, but you can describe them later.
   
   Initially, it's best to wait with the huge descriptions; your players likely won't remember anyway, and you don't want to overload their mind's eye.
   
   Another trick is to base the amount of description on the situation. If the players pass through an army encampment and meet ten different people who want to accompany them, the only character who needs more than at most a one-word description would be the leader of the men, assuming such a leader exists.
3. Pick a main goal for the character. He may not know it himself, and he probably won't be forthcoming with it, but it's what the character wants. Play the character with that goal in mind.
4. Don't assume the character is either an enemy or a slave to the main characters. In fact, even though the PCs are the center of the campaign, that doesn't mean they're important in the eyes of the NPC's. On the other hand, players generally love attention, so if the players have done something really cool spoken of in rumor, having the NPC say something about it can really make their day.
5. Remember... and this is important... that enemy NPCs seldom want to die. They have self-preservation just as anyone else. I suspect most neophyte GMs who like their NPCs to fight to the death do so because it's more convenient than acting out the reactions of a defeated NPC. But it's really not that hard, and a character who gives up should be willing to broker for his freedom.

I've got tons more tips and experience, overwhelming as it may sound, but that doesn't really matter. Luckily, instinct and experience will show them to you without much prompting from me or anyone else. Fifteen years of role playing has shown me that you really can't overempathise the meaning of characters and character-driven plots. In the end, it's their motivations and aspirations that form the world you're playing in.

The campaign we've been playing for three years now, for example, consists (narratively speaking) of the past (what we've done), a possible conclusion (still years away), and different characters' plans and goals.

So learn to work those characters. They can be more fun than a barrel of succubi.

Also, player creativity is generally helpful, not the reverse. One of my buddies claims he uses their brains instead of his own when GMing -- he just throws in a randomly weird McGuffin into the plot. And then the players begin speculating in hushed tones about how the hell that thing fits into the plot, thereby in a meandering fashion inventing the solution for the GM.

Thanks for all the suggestions and input, I could definitely use that. And because I'm going to be referring to this frequently, this thread is definitely getting bookmarked, lol.

PrinceofLowLight wrote:An excellent guide:

http://www.dragondogpress.com/unclefiggy/gm/

I like this, by the way. It's a good basis for beginning your GM campaign. I did disagree a bit with the "Roleplaying vs. Adventuring" part, though. It seems the author's a bit too much into mainstream games, because he apparently thinks you have two choices: one, rewarding good role playing with experience points, and two, rewarding achievements in the "game" sense with experience points. There are, however, at least three more possible ways of doing it.

The first is to do both; to allow the characters to advance based on both successful actions and good role playing.

The second is to abandon the to my view inexplicable premise that you have to go out on a quest to learn stuff. Instead, you can let players learn stuff by actually doing them, although this is largely incompatible with the d20 system that many seem to play.

The third method is to essentially not reward the players by their characters getting more skilled or more adept at killing stuff, but to instead reward them in other character-based ways. This works especially well if the characters in question are competent to begin with.

Ah, D&D...can't wait for my group to restart our campaign this summer.

My own personal suggestion: always have back up plans and adventures, because your plans will most likely end up having a wrench tossed in them by the players doing something you didn't expect.

And sometimes characters just won't get along, you'll have to learn to deal with it. For example, in our group, characters are killed off more by fellow party members then they are by monsters.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: EDIT: As far as player vs. player goes, it's really a judgement call.

PvP I think should only happen if both participants get a proper chance to decide if they want it, and get out of they don't.

In one WHFRP game we had we had two cases of PvP in one session. One was a dwarf taking a dislike to me (things had been building over several sessions) and he punched me in the face - I responded in kind and a fight broke out. Things happened to stop us killing each other, but we were both prepared to go that far.

On the other hand in the same session another dwarf tried to kill some of the parties elves by pushing them in to a chaos tainted river. Other than their roll to dodge, they didn't get a chance to withdraw and at least one character got screwed because of it, which wasn't cool for that person - he hadn't done anything to deserve it other than being an elf and hadn't wanted to fight other players at that time.

As a DnD DM your goal is to actively try and kill your players. Being DnD this is harder than you might think. But, if they ever piss you off, I have just one thing to say:

Redcaps. Redcaps end players. They turn them into a fine red mist, smelling of offal, hanging in the air as the Redcaps dance around singing irish folktunes at 250bpm.

Sharp-kun wrote:

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: EDIT: As far as player vs. player goes, it's really a judgement call.

PvP I think should only happen if both participants get a proper chance to decide if they want it, and get out of they don't.
*snip examples*

It depends on the players in question, of course. The second situation you're describing sounds like the guy was just a dick. In that case, the solution is to kick him out of the group (or better yet, not let people like that in), rather than constrain the players just to keep him in check.

One suggestion, since you don't have access to a DM screen: Set your arm on the table, and roll the dice into the cupped space of your hand. Any lookie-lou's who try to read them should get smacked.

Another nasty trick played by a DM I ran with: multiple rolls. Roll more dice than you actually need, but only count the roll on the red ones. Next turn, count the blue ones. Works best if you're like me and have several different sets of dice, and it confuses the lookie-lou's since they can't be sure which dice you're 'counting' this turn.

Yay, more replies!

Eleas:

In addition to the experience given for killing things, I give exp. based on both RPing well, as well as achievements made throughout it.

Jadeite:

My last 'Plan B,' funny as it is, ended up with a failed saving throw, getting their character killed by an imp. Which was really funny, cos they were playing a CE Ranger, with a beholder as a follower/mount (because I thought that was funny).

As for PVP, well, dice rolls kill the characters in our campaign more than anything else.

Sharp-kun:

Trust me, we've got enough headaches in our campaign as far as disagreeing characters. And some characters made specifically to be 'peacekeepers' for said characters.

weemadando:

I will reiterate. The characters have an easy enough time killing EACH OTHER.

LadyTevar:

Definitely the nice thing about 4-5 sets of dice. Even if I could use a d100 and another d30. Besides, I change whether percentiles (which are currently the most often rolled dice for me) are high or low, even or odd, with every time I roll them. And if I'm deciding who the monsters hit (or, just as often, who the botched rolls hit), I change around who is what number with each roll of the d# (depending on how many people are playing). Or whether a chicken gets hit (running gag with this campaign).