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flare X2
2011-01-23, 12:16 PM
I am a new DM and would like some help. It dosn't matter whever its dungeon design advice or tips on role playing, any and all help would be good. Also any other new DMs please use this as a resource to help you start your way to becoming a god of the D20.

Fallbot
2011-01-23, 12:25 PM
Have a look here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76474).

Welcome to the playground and good luck with the campaign

Tibbaerrohwen
2011-01-23, 12:30 PM
There are some general things, like making sure to create/alter adventures and dungeons to suit the strengths and weaknesses of your players and don't Deus Ex Machina if you can help it.
Everyone has there own style of DMing though. I like to keep options open to my players, even if it means I have to re-write the story of the campaign when I get home or scour the boards for the homebrewed PrC they want to use, because, in the end, everyone having fun is key for me. I also like to keep option open for RPing and give extra rewards for good RPing; people are only as interested in the adventure as they are interested in the character they are playing in the adventure.
One thing I've learned is that you should never be afraid to bend the rules if it means a better time for your players.

EDIT: Fallbot, that thread is spectacular! I wish I'd known about it when I started DMing.

Totally Guy
2011-01-23, 12:31 PM
I was wondering whether this would be "I'm a dummy help me DM" or "I'm DMing for a bunch of dummies!" :smalltongue:

It's not the one I could try to help with.:smallwink:

Techsmart
2011-01-23, 12:32 PM
1-Don't make concrete plans. No matter how sure you are that the party is gonna do what you want them to do, they will try to do something else (I.E. We are in a campaign, what are you guys gonna do? "we are gonna spend the entire session in the tavern seeing which character gets drunk first").
2- (goes with #1) Get comfortable making things as you go. Unless you try to completely railroad the party, you are gonna have times when the party goes somewhere you don't expect them to go. Maps are well and good until the party is nowhere near the place you plotted.
3- know the party, and try to give them all something to feel useful about. nothing makes your players hate you more than making them useless. Have some traps, locked doors, and opponents the rogue can sneak attack. If there's a knight, toss him a bone with something semi-intelligent.
4- Remember that your playing a game with the PCs, not against them. Try to make dungeons push them to their limits, but without killing them (spellcasters are out of spells, fighters are low on hp, etc.).

flare X2
2011-01-23, 01:07 PM
You seem to get all these threads on how to handle players and how to set up a session but rarly find any thing on the more adventurey aspects(e.g dungeon design, how to make a good villian, intresting encounter's etc.). and that was really what I was looking for.

Burnheart
2011-01-23, 01:31 PM
If its Villian design you want look, under the gaming section to the left, its got some great help with that.

DisgruntledDM
2011-01-23, 02:00 PM
This has been said, but I will repeat: Always have a backup plan, in case the party completely avoids/royally screws up your primary quest. I personally have different dungeons mapped out that are ready to be placed almost anywhere.

RebelRogue
2011-01-23, 02:30 PM
This has been said, but I will repeat: Always have a backup plan, in case the party completely avoids/royally screws up your primary quest. I personally have different dungeons mapped out that are ready to be placed almost anywhere.
Good advice, but if the OP is new to DMing, telling the players to be a bit cooperative if they ignore all his leads is perfectly acceptable. Also, a less metagamey way of doing this is guiding the players to make PCs that fit the general campaign theme. I.e. 'You should make characters that are somewhat friendly towards dwarves' is a good guideline, if the plot hook involves helping a dwarven king retrieve a McGuffin.

olthar
2011-01-23, 02:36 PM
You seem to get all these threads on how to handle players and how to set up a session but rarly find any thing on the more adventurey aspects(e.g dungeon design, how to make a good villian, intresting encounter's etc.). and that was really what I was looking for.

Dungeon design is very idiosyncratic. Once you figure out the setting for your "dungeon" (i.e. is a an abandoned castle, an arch-lich's tomb, an orc tribe's hideaway, or a cave in the hills that some bandits hide in) you will then need to figure out how the ecology of the place works.

(I'm gonna stick to low level because if your first campaign as DM is a high level one then you are just asking for trouble before beginning)
A relatively simple dungeon construction
If, for example, it is a small cave with a group of bandits, then it will probably have been made slightly habitable by them. Maybe the bandits will have sectioned off side areas for sleeping with a large gathering area for eating and planning. Maybe side areas represent different factions within the bandit group and what looks like a cohesive whole is actually a bunch of separate bands that live and nominally work together under a physically powerful leader that nobody is willing to openly challenge. The physical space of this cavern will largely depend on the type of bandits. If they are led by an intelligent and charismatic leader, then maybe they have taken the time to level out sections of the stone so they can be more comfortable. Additionally, they will probably have set a trap or alarm so they can know if they are under attack. If it is a strongman holding together fractious elements into one band, then it may be less likely that they have done such work as a group, but maybe one of the lieutenants has in an attempt to attract followers.


More complicated dungeons have even more difficult politics.
If you have a multilevel dungeon or abandoned castle with many different creature type, then you need to think about how they interact. One of the games I played clearly have showed that the DM wasn't thinking about npc - npc interaction in her dungeon design. The dungeon was basically a who's who of 1-4hd monsters that would never coexist without major conflict, but they were sitting in rooms only a few hundred feet apart with no apparent knowledge of the others existence. If you want to populate a dungeon with a couple of the classic low level creatures, lets say kobolds, goblins, and orcs, then you need to figure out beforehand how these creatures interact. First, don't follow your first instinct and have the dungeon go weakest to strongest like an RPG (kobold level 1, gobliin level 2, orc level 3). These are all creatures that are of low average to average intelligence. It is likely that they work together in some fashion. Additionally, just because the kobolds are the weakest doesn't mean they are the bottom of the ladder. There are likely at least 2 or 3 times as many kobolds in this place than there are goblins or orcs. Maybe all three groups trade together because they have similar but slightly different needs and abilities.

Because just a three creature-type dungeon gets boring, lets say you also added in a few other things. Maybe the goblins have some war dogs, and there is also a tribe of spiders that has taken up residence in one of the rooms. Why would the kobolds/goblins/orcs allow the spiders? Well maybe the spiders primary food source is goblin with some orc and kobold when nothing works. If the spiders stick around in one area, then the various monster tribes would be able to find and destroy them, but because the spiders move they could be in any room on the goblin level and there's a 20% chance that when the pcs find them the spiders are in the middle of killing and eating goblins. This could also help explain why the party may run into wandering monsters. The spiders could be going from one room to another to eat and/or hide while sleeping, while the goblins/orcs/kobolds can be patrolling hoping to find the current residence of the spiders to get rid of them.

Wandering monsters don't just come from nowhere though. If the party encounters a goblin patrol, then it means whatever room the goblins came from there will be x fewer goblins in said room. If the spiders are encountered wandering, then the party eliminates the possibility of finding the spiders in a room chowing down on goblin meat. Additionally, every time you think about rolling a wandering monster roll you must assume that there are creatures moving. Dungeons are not static ecosystems where the creatures sit in their rooms waiting for the party to pass by and unless it is a straight line dungeon where the party starts at the entrance walks down the straight line corridor to room one, kills room one, walks back into the corridor for room 2 etc. the creatures are likely to know something is up. The kobolds likely have their own passages around so they can get around without being caught by spiders. Goblins may also have made their own passages, while orcs are likely to just use the natural environment that was given to them. If there are forks in the path, then you can bet that creatures from opposite fork will have dropped through to catch up with creatures from already killed area. Unless the pcs are thorough and extremely quick, they will eventually face organized resistance rather than bands of npcs waiting quietly in rooms to die.

Even in this idyllic cohabitation setting I've planted, it is unlikely that these groups are friends as much as cohabitants. They probably tolerate each other inasmuch as any one group all out attacking the other would result in the 3rd killing them all. Maybe this dungeon was originally a cave that the goblins started to expand. During their expansion they met a tribe of kobolds that was living in a nearby cave network and who was also expanding their living quarters. The two of them fought on and off for a while, and it was during this fighting that a wandering tribe of orcs pushed their way in. The tribe of orcs would have been too weak to fight either group at first, but because they were fighting each other the orcs gained a foothold. The creatures being intelligent, stopped fighting so as to not get killed by this third group which led to an uneasy peace with all three. It is likely that there are skirmishes between the groups often, but nothing major. Maybe the PCs could talk with one of the groups and convince them that they will help them push out their "friends" in exchange for not being attacked by said group. It is also possible that the PCs encounter the dungeon during the aforementioned active war phase. If this is the case, then the three groups are likely all fighting each other and will be much more militarized / vigilant than during the later "peace" phase.

Even more complicated dungeons can be much more difficult to map out with multiple layers many of which may never even know the other layers exist. Kobolds may never go down to level 5 of your crazy dungeon where there is an entrance to the underdark. Or maybe the orcs at the top are unaware of the necromancer who originally built the place and who doesn't mind the orcs four levels up because they keep out unwanted visitors. The orcs may believe they run the place, but also be aware that nobody goes beyond a certain point because anyone who does never comes back.

The physical creation of dungeons is also of importance. Dungeons made in buildings are easier because they are designed in a similar manner to buildings you've been in. Dungeons that are natural caves are also relatively easy (though if all of your dungeons are natural caves with square rooms then you're losing realism for simplicity). One of the reasons my above example involved goblins and kobolds is that both races mine, which allows you to create a dungeon with more or less rectangular rooms and no need to explain why they are shaped this way. It is, of course, possible to handwave that problem away (the room is roughly this size, I'm drawing you a rectangle because it is easier to deal with). Stairs are another issue. In multilevel dungeons you need to explain why creatures with no real architectural abilities built stairs. Maybe the original inhabitants did, or maybe the levels aren't delineated that way. Maybe the corridors slope slightly downward and there are switchbacks where suddenly you realize you are actually underneath a room you were in before without ever going down stairs. Be careful with these though because depth is an issue. One of the more amusing dungeons I was in had stairs that dropped you one story (13 feet or so) between levels. One of the levels had a pit trap that dropped you 20 feet down. After picking the rogue out of the pit trap and going down another 13 or so feet to the next level everyone had to ask the DM how the pit trap didn't do that. Especially since it was really clear that the pit trap should have opened into a main room in the level below.

If you are going to build 3 dimensions into your dungeons make sure they work. The pit traps should have a few feet between them and the next level down so there is no question that falling into a pit drops you down a level. If you want your pits to do that, then you need to explain why the creatures below enjoy having a hole in their roof that periodically drops trouble down on them (maybe that's their chimney and every once in a while something falls from above into their fire pit).

Hope some of that was helpful. The ecology thing has been an issue with me since I was in a dungeon where the dm had a giant bug and its babies in one room and on the other side of the same level (but nowhere near its obvious meal) a giant spider. There was no evidence that the giant spider was aware of giant-sized happy meals only a couple hundred feet away (since the spider was described as hungry and the spider's webs were described as having a few smaller humanoids in them rather than the giant-sized bugs).

General advice. When drawing up a dungeon or something make it a schrodinger's dungeon. Putting a lot of effort into something only to have the PCs completely miss the plot hook is annoying. If the plot hook is unrelated to the dungeon design then find a way to build a dungeon with the schrodinger's portion of it fit whatever plot hook you want and then tweak the ecology so it fits. Killing an evil necromancer is very similar to killing any other evil spell-casting creature. So if you want to have them do that quest then have a portion of your ecology built around "evil spellcaster lurks here" and then just fill that in for whichever hook they bite on.

flare X2
2011-01-23, 03:45 PM
Thanks for the advice. That was the sort of advice i've been looking for. I hope that this has been helpfull to some other new DMs too. But please don't stop posting.