First time GM

[Rapidgator]

I'm going to be the GM for a D&D 3.5 campaing set, and it's my first time doing this, so are there any advices and hints I should know?

[MonkeySage]

I pretty much went by observing how my own dm ran a game. my first game sucked but ended quickly, so far my second game has been successful.

I invited my own dm to join my games, and his criticism has helped me a lot.

Don't write too many notes: an outline leaves a lot of room for the choices your players could make.

This last bit might seem obvious, but thumb through the dmg every now and then. it answered a lot of my own questions.

[Kudaku]

Start small. Don't commit to a full adventure path or build a 300 page campaign setting, odds are you'll burn out or make mistakes you won't realize you did until about six months later.
I'd suggest starting with a single AP book, a game module, or perhaps even the introductory PF beginner box adventure. For instance the We Be Goblins adventure is short, hilarious, free, available as a download on Paizo's website, and does a lot of the heavy lifting for you by providing premade enemies, storylines, quests, treasure etc.

Make sure you're playing with good people who are aware that you're trying this out - both sides of the table are going to need a good bit of patience.

Read some GM guides - the Game Mastery Guide is 400 pages of excellent advice if you have the time and inclination, if you do a little googling you can find the "cliff notes" on how to be a good GM on various RPG forums.

[Thrair]

Also, one big piece of advice: Improv more than you plan, and have a couple generic encounters on standby that you can apply to more than one scenario.

If you make this big plan for a session where the PCs storm a castle going for the big bag, they will inevitably get sidetracked and go someplace else.

Big elaborate encounters designs have a place, but trust me: Personal experience has taught me that forcing them rarely works well.



Second big piece of advice: You can have authority to overrule the book, and to fudge things a little. Just never do it to the detriment of players.

Did the party get wrecked by unlucky crits by a random mook, who mauled them badly before escaping? Leaving them weak and drained, and unlikely to stand up to that big boss around the corner they don't know about? Welp. That boss is now an Unperson and was never there. Random-mook-blessed-by-RNG just got promoted to boss, simply by happenstance.


It follows up on the principle of improvising things: "That one bastard" they saw roll nat 20s and who foiled their clever plans by sheer luck of the dice is going to be far more satisfying to stomp into the dirt next time the party meets him than some random dude the NPCs have mentioned as being a big wig.


Big example: In the campaign I'm running, there's an NPC who started off as a 3 HD bandit guard. He had no name, was expected to die instantly, and had no loot worth mentioning. He was a glorified car alarm. So what happened?

PC attempts to attack him fell on their ass. Firearms misfired, ranged touch attack rolls were crap, he made his Will saves. Blind luck made this guy memorable.

So, since he survived the battle, I made him an NPC. Who they love to hate. One of them took great joy into bluffing him into thinking he was cursed to have his **** fall off if he crossed them (leading to the nickname "Dickless"). He stood out, and the party has roleplayed off him.

Meanwhile, the NPC I originally designed to be the actual boss of that encounter (and possibly recurring NPC) got his ass stomped into the ground in 2 rounds and hasn't even been mentioned since.


Design the world and the setting, and set the motives of the villains. But let the players direct the story. They'll do a better job than you can ever do on your own.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm going to be the GM for a D&D 3.5 campaing set, and it's my first time doing this, so are there any advices and hints I should know?
3.5 specific advice: have your players create characters together, and make sure that everyone's optimized to the same level, which you're comfortable playing at. The game's imbalances only mainly become a problem when one or more people in the group have characters that are drastically more or less powerful than their fellows.

[Maginomicon]

Watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrU0_A-PFk).

Actually, watch everything he makes (http://www.youtube.com/user/countermonkeybard/videos).

[HammeredWharf]

If you're going to make your own campaign from scratch, design the important events that will happen in the world. For example, your Big Bad may nuke the city player characters were in or a war may be declared. Make sure the players aren't there to prevent those events, because you can never reliably predict what they'll do. This allows you to move the story forward without railroading too much.

If aren't experienced enough to design encounters yourself, use a premade module.

[BrokenChord]

If you're going to make your own campaign from scratch, design the important events that will happen in the world. For example, your Big Bad may nuke the city player characters were in or a war may be declared. Make sure the players aren't there to prevent those events, because you can never reliably predict what they'll do. This allows you to move the story forward without railroading too much.

If aren't experienced enough to design encounters yourself, use a premade module.

Building somewhat on what this fine gentleman has said, also make sure your world doesn't revolve around your PCs, even though they'll be major figures in it. Although building and predicting on what they will do is doomed to fail and cause issues down the line, a great tool for both measuring the consequence of their actions as well as keep things going if they take weird Plan Cs is to write out what will happen in a given event that the PCs might get involved in, but from the perspective of the PCs NOT getting involved. Do so in some detail, I might add; this helps you be judicious about the continuation of events PCs aren't present for, as well.

[HammeredWharf]

Also, try to time your important events so that they take place near the end of each session and subtely determine your players' next course of action. For example, if they come out of a dungeon and see a huge explosion where their home city used to be, you can ask them what they'll do next. They may decide to run straight to the city gates, sneak around carefully, run away heroically or use that scroll of Plane Shift you forgot all about. If you've timed the event correctly, you can end the session there, giving you some time to bang your head against a wall and try to think of a way to get them back from Mechanus.