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Lord of Syntax
2010-02-10, 07:12 PM
I have been wanting to try DMing for a long time, and I am asking for advice for a first time DM, long time player.

Iceforge
2010-02-10, 07:19 PM
My advice would be to take a GM you know and who you think is a Good GM and tell him you would like to try GMing and ask if he would like to play with you and help you out.

That means you have someone to support you in the start while you are trying to adapt to being on the other side of the screen.

I think that can do a lot to aid you in the beginning and I have been co-GMing like that for a few players now, when they wanted to try out GMing

Rixx
2010-02-10, 07:27 PM
It's not nearly as overwhelming as you'd think. Just cook up a story and some statblocks and be prepared to make up a lot of stuff on the fly.

drengnikrafe
2010-02-10, 07:48 PM
It's not nearly as overwhelming as you'd think. Just cook up a story and some statblocks and be prepared to make up a lot of stuff on the fly.

+1 this.

Also, don't be afraid to ask for help. Furthermore, don't be afraid to make a ruling on something to which you don't know the actual rules.

arguskos
2010-02-10, 07:54 PM
My suggestion would be to not be discouraged by failure. You will do stuff badly at first (and for a long time actually), and it will suck sometimes, and that's just how it is. Don't give up, make things right, and keep trying. DMing is really deeply rewarding when it happens well, and it's worthy struggling past the failures and the pitfalls you'll run into. :smallbiggrin:

kladams707
2010-02-10, 08:18 PM
My suggestion would be to not be discouraged by failure. You will do stuff badly at first (and for a long time actually), and it will suck sometimes, and that's just how it is. Don't give up, make things right, and keep trying. DMing is really deeply rewarding when it happens well, and it's worthy struggling past the failures and the pitfalls you'll run into. :smallbiggrin:

This has definitely been my experience, I've only attempted a couple of times, and both times I've been pretty bad. I'd try it again but I've been pretty busy lately.

arguskos
2010-02-10, 08:19 PM
This has definitely been my experience, I've only attempted a couple of times, and both times I've been pretty bad. I'd try it again but I've been pretty busy lately.
Takes time dude. I've been doing it for nearly 10 years now, and only in the last 3-4 have I really gotten to a place that I'd call "good", and I've still got a loong way to go. Just don't give up! That's the key!

Pyro_Azer
2010-02-10, 08:21 PM
One of the things I have found that has helped is to read a module widely thought of as good. You don't nessesarily have to run it but look through it for ideas on how it is structured from a story perspective and a mechanical perspective.

Skorj
2010-02-10, 08:29 PM
Long winded answer, just in case you're bored. :smallbiggrin:

My first principle when DMing is: DMing is extemporaneous speaking. It requires a little prep, but you don't need to know every detail of your world ahead of time.

You are building a world - make sure you understand how and why it works. The world need be no larger than a dungeon and a nearby town, or it can be an actual planet, or a pre-packaged setting, but regardless you need to be able to reason about it on the spot.

You should know who is in charge, and who is trying to be in charge, and why they aren't yet in charge. Even if the only two significant NPCs are "Goog King QuestDispenser" and "Duke BBEG von Evil", know who the major NPC players are and give them some sort of emotional motivation. Rich has written about (http://www.giantitp.com/Gaming.html)how to do this - it's fast and easy. If you know who's the lead NPCs are, and what makes them happy, you can reason from there in response to a lot of crazy stuff the party might want to try. If they try something crazy that would make the guy in charge happy, chances are they won't face much social resistance. If they try somehting crazy that would anger the guy in charge, but make some other powerful NPC happy - hey, instant plot hook.

The other thing you need is a basic "world map", at whatever scale you want to limit the campaign to (again, a village and a dungeon entrance can be a sufficient world). You often need a detailed, small-scale map of wherever the party is right now, but you rarely need a detailed map of anywhere else. If you at least have the world map, then when the party goes somewhere unexpected you know "mountains" or "swamp", and you can put together random encounters as you feel like it.

There's nothing wrong with buying a pre-packaged setting that provides both of the above: major NPCs, and world map. But if you use such a setting, you need to read it thoroughly, because the players are going to have expectations about that setting. I'd suggest only doing that for a setting you already know well from being a player.

Once you have your setting, just remember that the players aren't there to follow your script. If they do something crazy and unexpected, you need to choose whether to allow it or not based on what fits your setting. If your players say "this dungeon is hard, but the village is pretty weak, lets kill all the villagers, turn them into zombies, and send the zombies into the dungeon to get the treasure" - relax, don't panic. If that sort of thing doesn't make sense in your setting, just think about why not, and handle it in character. For just about anything clever the party tries, it's useful to ask yourself "why dosn't everyone in the world do that all the time". But often it's more fun to just go along with crazy ideas for a while, then think of ways they could go horribly wrong, and make that the new adventure.

It's not important that the game goes the way you planned, all that's important is that everyone has fun, and that after each day's gaming you leave things where there are still fun things to do next time.

Kaerou
2010-02-10, 09:55 PM
Some useful tips from me:

1, Keep a sketchpad on hand and fill it with notes and the like, and the following:
1a, Names
1b, Sidequest hooks / actions
1c, Used names and a brief summary on who/what they are.

1b is the most useful: if you grow unsure about your mai quest, you can use these things to run brief little things to fill out a night. Mine is full of things like

Orc raid on farm, child gone missing and mustbe found, monsters seen in woods, etc. I find them pretty important as I only map out main plot in brief and write possible ways of progression for a small part. Why? The players ALWAYS deviate from that train track, and you don't ever want the train track to be visible OR the only way forward.

2, Do not be afraid to say no to your players. If saying no, don't be afraid to houserule something balanced if they want something overpowered just for the 'feel'

3, A good rule of thumb for balance is to limit players to one 10 level PrC or 2 PrC's is one has a 5 level limit before the game starts so they know what they're working with.

4, If any want to play 'monster' characters, hit dice are enough of a penalty for the most part, LA on top of HD is pointlessly crippling. I do away with LA if the player has natural HD and never had any problems.

aboyd
2010-02-11, 01:54 AM
I've given very long-winded posts of advice elsewhere, but for now I would like to mention just one trick that helped me immensely. And that is, you only need 1 of anything. Maybe we call this the "Rule of 1." I'll explain.

I have a bit of OCD, and if you leave me to it, I will chart out an entire planet down to character sheets for every single being. I will pick out levels of expert for the blacksmith, give him a backstory and pick out ranks for the skills he's good at, etc. And then, I'll do it again for his competitor down the street. And then multiply that by 100, because hey, the players are going to visit more than 1 town, right?

So, yeah, it's possible as a new DM (or even as a veteran DM who is far too in love with world building) to get bogged down in trying to cover everything, trying to know what each NPC will do, what each town looks like, what the surrounding forest contains, etc. And this is a primary way that DMs burn themselves out. Most don't even get as obsessive as I do before they burn out. They just try to do reasonable prep for the upcoming game and find, "Crap, there's too much to do, I'm bogged down." They put off the game, or they skimp on sleep/work, or whatever. And then they find themselves needing a big break.

So, Rule of 1 solves that. Here's the idea. Your players can only interact with one of any given thing at any given time. Usually. They can split the party and wreak havoc. But assuming they don't suck like that, your players will all be interacting serially. So, they'll hit a town (one), and head to the inn (one), and talk up the bartender (one). Thus, before the game starts, you only need one of anything.

For example, I used to stat up every merchant in a town. By the 20th character sheet, my eyes would be watering and I'd swear that Heroforge was the tool of the devil. But now I stat up one. I leave the name blank. I print it 5 times. I put them in a folder. When the players interact with a merchant, if he remains a nameless bit player and the PCs move on without another thought, then I don't bother to do anything with that merchant. However, the moment a PC picks a fight with a merchant, or strikes up a rapport with that merchant, I pull out of those merchant character sheets, write down a name for the guy, toss a couple ranks into a relevant skill, and that's enough.

If they get into a big interaction with another merchant during the same game session, well, I pull out yet another copy of that NPC sheet, throw down some ranks in different stats, give him/her a different name, and maybe add a note about a personality quirk that differentiates this merchant from the other ("He's got a limp"). Done, again.

Same with the town itself. My players wanted to head out to a new town. They had 3 choices. I was weeping inside thinking that I had a week to completely build 3 towns -- and you can guess by now how detailed I intended to be, and it was weighing heavily on me. But what I realized is that they can only hit a single town at a time, so I only need one for now. The other two? I'll make 'em in subsequent weeks when/if they bother to visit. Of course, one difficulty is that you might not know which town they'll pick, so you think you have to have them all finalized. But you don't. You can make the core of a town that would work for any of the 3 and then you just embellish and add flavor as needed.

So if I have 3 towns and two are population 2000, and one is population 10000, I put together a core scheme that works for 2000 residents. I come up with some quests, a handful of NPCs, an inn, and that's plenty. Done. Then during the game day they announce they're going to the "big" town. Oh. No problem. I multiply most stuff as needed. For example, instead of 1 inn, there are 3. No, I don't need to stat up 2 new inns. They can only hit one, and when they arrive, I'll pull out the info I put together. The only time I'd need to stat out the competing inns is if the players don't like the first one. And even then, I can probably just take the work I already did, copy it on the fly (adding a few tweaks that I think the players will like) and be OK.

Once I learned that the players were just as happy fighting 12 copies of a cool goblin as they were fighting 12 lovingly hand-made individual goblins with backstories and personal motiviations, well, things got a LOT less stressful. :)

Bonus
I have to give you a bonus tip, since I called my rule the "Rule of 1." I have to do this because my rule's name is just a modified ripoff of someone else's much better-named rule. That rule is called the "3 Clue Rule." Justin Alexander explains it here:

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/three-clue-rule.html

But the quick summary is that you must provide players with more than one clue/tip/solution/pathway forward. If you want the players to understand how to find the bad guy, you need to have 3 ways for them to find him. They might "get it" on the first try, and if so great, but if they just aren't picking up on the hint, don't ding them. Don't hand it to them on a platter. Don't abandon the module. Don't throw up your hands and say, "You're too stupid, I give up." (Ha ha.) Instead, let them press on, and during the course of the adventure maybe another hint/rumor will pop up with more information (or the same information worded differently -- you'd be surprised at how simple word changes can resonate with people and get the lightbulbs to pop on over their heads).

OK, enough. Good luck. Have fun.