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rs2excelsior
2014-12-21, 09:02 PM
Hello all,

So this upcoming semester, it looks like I'll be running my first D&D campaign. I've played D&D before, and I've even tried my hand at running a campaign set in our world using the HERO system (didn't last long, mostly because of time conflicts for all involved). But this will be my first shot at a straight-up, fully-created, fantasy world. I've got some general ideas for the setting, but I need a bit of help.

Basics for the setting: I'm using Pathfinder for the system. Low-magic setting--arcane casters are virtually unheard of, although divine magic is in relatively common use. Overall setting is based on Europe in the late 1400s to early 1500s. Human lands are basically the Holy Roman Empire (many independent principalities, theoretically unified under one ruler associated with the church, although with little real power), Dwarven lands are the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (old kingdoms who mostly fight amongst themselves, rarely intervening politically in the affairs of others), Halfling lands are a much less militaristic Italy, although they too fight each other for influence and power, and the Gnome lands are the Slavic countries, although much more backward and barbaric (due to anti-magic crusades of the other races). Elven lands are France, if France had been overrun by extradimensional beasts trying to destroy the world, had (almost) its entire population killed or twisted into monsterous creatures, and been the site of on-and-off crusades and wars against said creatures for nearly a millennium.

I expect things to start in human lands, probably centering around a conflict between some nobles that the PCs get entangled in, and later moving out to the wastelands (ex-Elven lands)--with the PCs being sent either to overtly get them killed or as a false "honor," also that they aren't meant to survive.

I'm a bit stuck on how to handle that first stage, though. Both how to get the PCs together, and how they get involved with the first stage of the adventures. So does anyone have any general ideas on a conflict/plot hook that would fit into the setting? My general thoughts were that one noble sends the PCs to spy on another noble who he claims is being aggressive toward him, and then frames them because he was planning on attacking the second noble all along. But I can't imagine the first noble putting ads up in a local tavern for that kind of thing.

PCs will start at 1st level, so no "I heard of your reputations and brought you here" kind of beginning. Although I could have each player come up with a reason their character got thrown into a particular city jail (a rogue caught stealing, or a paladin who refused to surrender his weapons, for example), and then offer them freedom in exchange for completing certain tasks.

--

And on a more general note, does anyone have general advice on pitfalls for first-time DMs to avoid? There are two others in our D&D group who DM regularly who I can ask for advice, and at least one of them is going to play in the campaign. So in addition to getting a wider base of advice, I can't really ask for things too story-related if there are things the characters are supposed to figure out.

BWR
2014-12-22, 03:48 AM
The most important thing you can do is communicate. These boards are rife with "problem person" threads and the number one piece of advice is 'try talking'.
Be clear about what sort of game you want to run at character creation, be clear about what sort of optimization level you want, be clear about what sort material you permit, be clear about what sort of behavior you will allow in game and at the table. Lots of groups know this already but it can still be useful to make explicit.
If problems turn up, talk to the problem player one on one, quietly, calmly and try to do it with as little blame as possible. Most people are reasonable and will make an effort to go along with your requests if they are polite. "Excuse me, I wonder if you could do/stop doing X. It's making this game a bit hard to run otherwise" works a lot better than "Dude, stop that **** right now."
Also part of communication is making sure the players, and thus the PCs, have the right information in every scene. It's easy to forget to give them an important detail which makes the encounter hard or impossible to get through. Make sure you tell them what they need to know. A little extra for flavor is also nice.

Secondly, you will make mistakes. Misremember rules, make bad calls in situations where the rules are unclear or lacking, whatever.
Don't worry.
It happens to everyone. When these come to light apologize for them and try to make amends. Don't bog down game time trying to fix them if it can't be done easily. Just apologize and move on. If the players don't want to let it rest,, say they will get a similar rule fudge in their favor later. If your mistakes resulted in something serious like the death of a PC and the mistake wasn't discovered until later, you might want to consider retconning the mistake and just handwaving away any oddities in any situations that came after that.

Those are the two most important things, imo. There's tons of other stuff you'll probably just have to learn as you go. Pathfinder has the "Game Mastery Guide" which is an excellent, mostly system neutral book on how to run and play games, especially D&D. Lots of tips for how to make a game run smoothly and a simple toolbox for world-building and campaign-building.

As for your game specifically, you could go with the old 'you are all captured'. You can even have someone come up to them and say "you look like reliable people who can take care of themselves. Interested in business?" and then have the 1st noble come up with some story about needing a little help with something important but being short-staffed at the moment. The PCs could be members of the noble's retinue that have been picked for the job but will then be cut loose and the noble will deny any knowledge of them. Maybe the PCs work for someone else and are on loan to the noble. You can also just start off the game with "you are all working for X, having been gathered together to help him with a job." No need to go into detail 'how' or 'why', just present them with 'what'.

Firest Kathon
2014-12-22, 04:42 AM
Building on BWR's advice, tell your players up front that this is your first time GMing for Pathfinder. Put up a rule that if there is some unclarity about a rule, you make a ruling (to not interrupt the flow of gaming) and later will look it up for future reference.

For the plot hook, let your players come up with it. Tell them there is some person X (or maybe some persons X, Y and Z) and ask them to come up with a relation to that person (family, mentor, cousin's best friend, ...) and a reason why they would help them (final task for education, family ties, ...). Make it a quest (more or less) unrelated to your overall campaign (or maybe not). After that, you can go the route of a noble coming to them with "I heard of your deeds, and have a task for you". Personal note: I do not like the prison approach, as I often play characters who would not end up in prison, either due to being quite lawful, or due to being a character who would not surrender to guards and rather fight or flee. So basically I would have to break character before the game even started...

Vitruviansquid
2014-12-22, 06:57 AM
One of my favorite GM tricks is getting your players all together to roll characters (you are having your players roll characters together, not alone, right?) and say "here is the game's premise, here is where you'll start, you all come up with how your characters have met and known each other."

Find an easy way to organize your sessions. I script out sessions as branching flow-charts with small notes containing pertinent information at each place in the chart, but you can find what works for you.

Listen to your players' feedback, but don't be afraid to stick to your guns. A lot of players have no idea what they want, but ceaselessly ask for one thing or another regardless. A lot of players will simply never be happy. A lot of players also give good advice, except that advice isn't applicable to the game you're looking to run.

Scipio_77
2014-12-22, 07:24 AM
And on a more general note, does anyone have general advice on pitfalls for first-time DMs to avoid? There are two others in our D&D group who DM regularly who I can ask for advice, and at least one of them is going to play in the campaign. So in addition to getting a wider base of advice, I can't really ask for things too story-related if there are things the characters are supposed to figure out.

* Don't get attached to your NPCs, flow with the players' actions and ambitions.
* Players will need more information than you think to figure stuff out.
* Players don't mind hard as long as they get fair.
* Note how player characters behave, remember that your NPCs can reach the same reasonable conclusions.
* The only roll that should ever be fudged is one that keeps a completely new player in the game.
* Honest dice makes for tense and exciting games.
* Rules are guidelines and you are the boss, but leave your conceptions of balance from the player perspective out it.

Use the resulting fair game mechanic to progress your story; not hinder it. Maybe you hadn't envisioned Leo Maximus, imperial assassin and badass extraordinaire, to be charmed by the lvl 1 wizard but that's what happened. Now make a good story out of it.

rs2excelsior
2014-12-22, 12:10 PM
For the plot hook, let your players come up with it. Tell them there is some person X (or maybe some persons X, Y and Z) and ask them to come up with a relation to that person (family, mentor, cousin's best friend, ...) and a reason why they would help them (final task for education, family ties, ...). Make it a quest (more or less) unrelated to your overall campaign (or maybe not). After that, you can go the route of a noble coming to them with "I heard of your deeds, and have a task for you". Personal note: I do not like the prison approach, as I often play characters who would not end up in prison, either due to being quite lawful, or due to being a character who would not surrender to guards and rather fight or flee. So basically I would have to break character before the game even started...

That is a good point. Plus, if the NPC is, say, a relatively powerful merchant, that gives the PCs a contact in high society and opportunities for more plot hooks.


One of my favorite GM tricks is getting your players all together to roll characters (you are having your players roll characters together, not alone, right?) and say "here is the game's premise, here is where you'll start, you all come up with how your characters have met and known each other."

Find an easy way to organize your sessions. I script out sessions as branching flow-charts with small notes containing pertinent information at each place in the chart, but you can find what works for you.

The players are all fairly experienced, and how it normally works in this group is that the GM will send out a summary of the background of the world and pertinent info about races, classes, etc. that are allowed, and everyone makes their characters on their own. It helps save time, given that we're all in college and have limited free time available to get together.

I like the idea of making session flow-charts. I assume they'd branch for likely PC actions when confronted with each situation?

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'm looking forward to seeing what things are like on the other side of the screen. I'll probably be back here as things go forward and I run into more specific things, but all of this seems like it'll be fairly helpful.

Knaight
2014-12-22, 01:15 PM
I'm a bit stuck on how to handle that first stage, though. Both how to get the PCs together, and how they get involved with the first stage of the adventures. So does anyone have any general ideas on a conflict/plot hook that would fit into the setting? My general thoughts were that one noble sends the PCs to spy on another noble who he claims is being aggressive toward him, and then frames them because he was planning on attacking the second noble all along. But I can't imagine the first noble putting ads up in a local tavern for that kind of thing.

The easy way to do this is to have the players do it for you. Basically, require the following at character creation:

The characters all have an existing reason to travel together, and everyone in the group knows at least somebody in the group.
The player characters all have a reason to pursue [particular goal that kicks off the adventure].


With your example first hook, you could just require that the PCs are all retainers of the particular noble to start with. There's no need to trawl taverns, the back stories explain how they got there, and when they all get stabbed in the back they have a good reason to stick together. I'd actually even recommend starting the game with the scene where they get stabbed in the back (maybe the spying job goes south because the second noble was warned, and the first scene is the PCs fighting their way out of an ambush).

Scipio_77
2014-12-22, 05:15 PM
I last tip I can give is a "roll as you go" characters. This is a very simple notation system for random D&D social encounters.

What you do is that for each local region or major city, you make a list of 20 names and races. You distribute the races by the commonality in the region, so if you in a city have 800 humans and 200 dwarves, then 16 of the names will be human and 4 dwarves. Split it equally into both genders (not completely correct, but it is good enough). On the list you keep open space so you can make notes.

Second you make a bonus list for various professions and crafts and a set bonus for skill level. DM notation (and d&d notation for that matter) doesn't need stats or skills, you just need roll bonuses. So you could have "merchant" (plus to all relevant merchant stats like appraise, bluff, sense motive, diplomacy) and a set skill-level (for example "grandmaster" could be +15 all skills or "beginner" could be +2 all skills).

The point of the system is to effortlessly create on the go characters that you also note down, without creating a break in the gameflow. This means for your campaign will slowly expand with NPCs as the players explore it, but the world will be consistent in the sense that these characters remain. You can expand on these NPCs to create plots and subplots of your own. If you jot down the dates when players encounter them you can expand on their story the next time the players visit (if it has been 2 years, perhaps the innkeeper's daugher died from disease? Perhaps the old sage is dead? etc etc)... this will keep the world living.As you get more used to it, you will be able to generate a whole host of different personalities, descriptions, flaws and strengths as you go.