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View Full Version : Help for new DM; 3.5



Dr. Roboto
2009-07-11, 02:07 PM
Hey there. I've dabbled in Dungeons and Dragons, but don't play it anymore, and I volunteered to be a DM on another forum, for a 3.5 campaign. The only problem is I was a player when I played with friends, and have no experience DMing.

We plan on playing the game through an online service, using IRC for talking. I'm not sure what plot I want. I don't really want to make the grid on graph paper and scan it in, so are there any good map-making tools that you don't need to download? Do any of you have any tips for an aspiring DM?

Glyde
2009-07-11, 02:09 PM
I'll just come out and say it

http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=maptool

There's a really good tool for creating maps, chatting, dice rolling, and storing character/npc information and macros.

Dr. Roboto
2009-07-11, 02:14 PM
Yeah, but I'm using a netbook right now. I can't really download much, as my small hard drive is completely taken up by classic rock, my operating system, and Firefox.

Vorpal word
2009-07-11, 02:29 PM
Don't let players use any material you don't a)own or b)have easy access to.

I'm a high school player/DM, and one of our players owns something like 50 books (mostly 3.5 supplements). Whenever there's a new campaign he whines about playing only out of core (which is all I have) and always wants to play almost entirely out of those books. The main problem is that some of those classes, feats, and spells are completely unbalanced when compared with core, but telling him that has little effect since core doesn't really balance with itself either (just compare, say, baleful polymorph to flame strike, or fighter to wizard, and you'll see what I mean).

Also, try to build stuff based on your group. If there's a barbarian PC in the party, take his Rage and ridiculous Strength (if any) into account for encounters and checks. If the players aren't too great with roleplaying, don't push them, just give them a kick-in-the-door game. Of course, you shouldn't base what you do exclusively on what your players say, or you'll end up like me, unable to run anything without arguing over rules which players know better than I do.:smalltongue:

PS: If you already know this and this post was a waste of time, I'm sorry.

Dr. Roboto
2009-07-11, 02:40 PM
No, wasn't a waste at all. I don't even own the DMG.

RTGoodman
2009-07-11, 02:50 PM
It won't help with your specific questions, but here's two pieces of advice. First, get the DMG. You can PROBABLY get by without it, but it's got a bit of stuff in it that you can't find elsewhere. Also, it's never a BAD book to have.

Second, read AKA Bait's So You Wanna Be A DM?: A Potentially Helpful Guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76474). It's got a lot of good advice for a first-time DM, and I highly recommend it.

Lord Loss
2009-07-11, 03:10 PM
Now, most people are going to stare at me and start hitting me with the previously mentioned 50 books, but I say let em use books they have.

If you're all having loads of fun with your intricately designed characters, no one'll care if it wraps around mechanics that are all different.


START AT LEVEL 1

The first campaign I started (I had never played D&D before) began at level 15. Don't repeat my mistake. It's painful. Ouchy. All in all, I had fun.

RTGoodman
2009-07-11, 03:41 PM
Now, most people are going to stare at me and start hitting me with the previously mentioned 50 books, but I say let em use books they have.

If you're all having loads of fun with your intricately designed characters, no one'll care if it wraps around mechanics that are all different.

I disagree with that - I think it'd be okay to allow other stuff, but as a first-time DM I'd only allow either what I had or what they could get me a copy of, so I could read and understand the mechanics. If someone has only ever played Core and starts to DM a party that's got a (Tome of Battle) Crusader, a (Tome of Magic) Shadowcaster, a Fighter, and a Rogue, it'd be much harder for them to gauge PC abilities and make sure the players with more exotic classes are following the rules? I mean, how many times have we seen DMs ban Psionics because they didn't know the rules and some player didn't know or conveniently "forgot" the rule about how many power points you can spend.

For a first campaign, I'd tell folks, for their starting characters, at least, that they need to be Core only. Once the game has gone on a while and the DM can get a chance to learn not just the normal ins and outs of DMing but also the optional stuff from supplements, THEN players can start to ask about adding in stuff (or retraining or swapping out characters or whatever).


START AT LEVEL 1

The first campaign I started (I had never played D&D before) began at level 15. Don't repeat my mistake. It's painful. Ouchy. All in all, I had fun.

That's relatively good advice, I'd say. I think 3rd Level is a better place to start characters (they're slightly less squishy, can start out with levels in a couple of classes if they're back-story requires it, have a few more options, and are able to handle more different kinds of enemies), but starting too high a level (anything over 5, probably) is just gonna get confusing.

Zaq
2009-07-11, 04:02 PM
Don't let players use any material you don't a)own or b)have easy access to.

I'm a high school player/DM, and one of our players owns something like 50 books (mostly 3.5 supplements). Whenever there's a new campaign he whines about playing only out of core (which is all I have) and always wants to play almost entirely out of those books. The main problem is that some of those classes, feats, and spells are completely unbalanced when compared with core, but telling him that has little effect since core doesn't really balance with itself either (just compare, say, baleful polymorph to flame strike, or fighter to wizard, and you'll see what I mean).

Also, try to build stuff based on your group. If there's a barbarian PC in the party, take his Rage and ridiculous Strength (if any) into account for encounters and checks. If the players aren't too great with roleplaying, don't push them, just give them a kick-in-the-door game. Of course, you shouldn't base what you do exclusively on what your players say, or you'll end up like me, unable to run anything without arguing over rules which players know better than I do.:smalltongue:

PS: If you already know this and this post was a waste of time, I'm sorry.

I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of this.

First of all, Core is not balanced at all. In fact, the PHB is probably the least balanced book in the WotC canon. Seriously. (I mean, it put the Druid and the Fighter side-by-side! Yes, I KNOW it's alphabetical, but come on!) Banning non-Core outright is rarely a good idea, and frankly I don't recommend it. You're completely right when you say that Core isn't balanced with itself, but there's almost nothing outside of Core that's as bad as what a Core-only wizard or druid can do. (Most of the things that ARE as bad already apply to one of the Big Five, or in core, the Big Three.)

I DO recommend that you tell all the players that if they want to use a book, they need to approach you at least a week or two in advance, provide you a copy of the material in question (including any relevant rules... a copy of the book is best), and explain to you what they want to do and where they hope to go with it. My rule of thumb is "surprising your GM is good; blindsiding your GM is bad." You should be familiar with everything on each character's sheet. When I'm GMing, I require my players to heavily annotate their character sheets with page numbers. Nothing should be listed without a book name and page number. You don't want to have to fudge something just because you can't find out exactly where that feat came from. (Fudging's not bad, but that's not a situation which should require it.)

I think that level 3 is an appropriate place to start. Level 1 really isn't the same game as any other level (the difference between 1 and 3 is much bigger than the difference between 3 and 5, for instance), and I say a character doesn't really feel like your character until at least level 3. (Let's face it, there are really only so many options you can have with a level 1 character.)

The two most important virtues a GM can hold are flexibility and consistency. I know those sound like they're at odds, but they're not. Be prepared to go with the flow. Let players alter the course of events, and be prepared for them to do strange things. However, also be consistent. If something works one way once, let it work that way again. This is especially important when you start adjudicating Rule of Cool effects and things that aren't necessarily covered in the DMG. You're giving the rogue a bonus to leap down from the ceiling onto the goblin's head? Awesome, just make sure that bonus applies next time someone tries that. You're ruling that it's possible to climb onto the Gargantuan creature's back and start stabbing its head, Link-style? Nifty, just make sure that the modifiers you apply to the situation are there next time. Stuff like that.

Oh, and don't be afraid to ask the players for help. You're the final arbiter of the game, sure, but you're not some capital-A Authority Figure who needs to be unapproachable and infallible. Don't let your pride get in the way.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-07-11, 04:03 PM
Domo Arigato... Mr. Roboto.

Check this link out for DMing tips (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76474)

Dr. Roboto
2009-07-11, 04:11 PM
Thanks for all the advice, really, but what I need right now is either a place where I can get grids as images from or a browser-based way to make pretty grids.

AslanCross
2009-07-11, 04:22 PM
This is the only browser-based mapping tool I know of. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20061121t)

Tukka
2009-07-11, 04:52 PM
If you don't own a book, ask the player who wants to play a non-core class to let you borrow the book for a week, along with a copy of their character sheet, to familiarize yourself with the class concept and how its abilities work. Make a few notes for the more complicated concepts. For small things like feats or individual spells, it's usually not too hard to review those things piecemeal. Also check and see how much of the info might be available online ... sometimes the stuff players want to use will be available as a preview or web enhancement straight off the WotC web site. For example, every single ToB maneuver and stance is available via the maneuver cards ToB web enhancement.

Irreverent Fool
2009-07-12, 05:26 AM
If you're a new DM, even with the player who has a ton of books, I commend your decision to stay inside core for the time being. My girlfriend began DM'ing in this last year and limited our group to core simply so she could familiarize herself with everything. A few exceptions were made, but the concepts/feats/spells had to be explained thoroughly and she reserved the right to veto if she decided it seemed to powerful for her game.

Around level 5, she let us gradually start bringing in things from outside sources (so we could PrC if we wanted). She was willing to modify or waive restrictions for PrCs since some of them require feats not in core. About this same time she became familiarized with the 'retraining' rules, allowing us to switch out some of our decisions. (Granted, we're a group of long-time friends, so we don't really have a 'this guy has all the books' problem. I don't think we even remember which book belongs to who at this point.)

Yes, we were a little disheartened at first about being limited to base classes (and one of our jerkier players showed up to character creation and then left when he was reminded we were doing core only), but we quickly forgot our mechanical 'limitations' when the game got going.

This is more or less the way I began running my games as well (though that's because there wasn't much else aside from core when I started with 3.5 :smallbiggrin:) and I think it's the only way to go as a newer DM/player. The 'let me borrow it for a week' is a good method too, assuming you have the time (and inclination) to read through a rulebook.

Be prepared to make up (or edit) your own monsters though. The first monster manual doesn't have too many options in each CR range and you don't want it determining the course of your campaign.



Thanks for all the advice, really, but what I need right now is either a place where I can get grids as images from or a browser-based way to make pretty grids.

It seems that -- in typical fashion -- our little ship of fools has misread the charts and answered entirely the wrong question.

RPtools (as linked above) is great. IIRC, it allows you to make maps and allows players to move tokens along the map individually. It also includes a chatbox and built-in diceroller. It can be a little bit of a pain to set-up (again iirc) since you have to set up port-forwarding if you are behind a router to allow others to connect to your game. If all you want is a pretty grid as an image, all you have to do is copy and paste lines in paint.

I haven't tried the wizards one that was also linked but it seems that it might do the trick.

I think Yahoo Instant Messenger has an option to draw images that are shared with other people in your chat. You could also set up a forum (there are many free forum sites available such as guildportal.com), prescan your map images, and post them as you go through the game, though this seems against the spirit of the question you asked.

obnoxious
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