How do I DM a game (technical details, not fluff)

[YCombinator]

Hey everyone,

I have played D&D for several years. I know the rules relatively well and I know what makes a good adventure. I'm planning to DM, and I've done so in the past but not that much. I've been reading the DMG and some guides on line and here is my take away...

After reading the DMG I feel like there's a lot of information in there. I can continue to reread it but I'd like a cheatsheet.

After reading on-line guides to being a DM I find that most of them greatly focus on the soft skills of DMing. Make sure the story is compelling. Avoid random encounters that aren't story focused. Act out table speak. Figure out if you want to allow table talk in combat.

The problem here is that I feel like I already have a very good grasp on how to craft the story, make the characters interesting etc. What I want is a brief, technical guide. Basically here's what I'm looking for...

Creating Encounters (DMG page 81)
Creating Quick Monsters (DMG page 274)
Creating Nonplayer Characters (DMG chapter 4)

These three sections I found pretty helpful. There's a lot of information there and I'm wondering if anyone has distilled this into the essentials. Also what am I missing from this list?

Does anyone have an guidelines for how to create characters on the fly? I'm imagining I will have lots of characters that I want to create thematically. They will have well developed personalities. They will have a race and a class but not necessarily have chosen spells or have any stats. I figure it's a waste of time to expand on all of those details for my characters if their personalities, information they given the player characters, and their goals are all that comes up. But if one of my well-developed characters gets in a fight, I'd love to have some quick way to apply stats to that character. How is that done?

I imagine DMs always have some encounters ready to go just in case. Are they generally the same mechanical encounter but reskinned based on what happens? Like I generate a 6 monster encounter with the right challenge rating for the party. If they go into the dungeon, boom those characters are goblins. If they storm the castle, they are guards. I imagine this is hard if I want to have realistic elements of the enemies since some would be spell casters and some would be melee. So maybe that's a bad idea. Do DMs have a 5 different encounters all planned out incase the heroes decide to go to any of the 5 different places?

Thanks a bunch. Any and all guidance is welcome.

[Ninja_Prawn]

A lot of the questions you've asked here all have the same answer: "it depends on the game you're running."

Sometimes you'll be able to go into a session and know that you completely control the environment. They're locked in a dungeon and it will take them multiple sessions to get out. They're on a ship that will be in transit for multiple sessions. Something like that. Then I would say: put some effort into your encounters. Think about how they present an obstacle to the PCs, make sure they offer multiple routes to victory. Make sure defeat is an option. Think about how they fit together and contribute to the mood. With combats, make sure there's logic to them, and that there's something in them to make the party think. Pre-roll treasure. Create NPCs beforehand. Etc., etc.

If you're in a more free-form situation, you may need to be more flexible and less prepared. Know which monsters might come up and have a rough idea of their CRs so you can throw together a combat quickly. Have some random NPC names to hand (and taverns, obviously). Start out simple and build on cues the players give you. Know what the long term goal is and hint at it during some of your scene transitions.

When it comes to homebrewing monsters, I wouldn't do that on the fly. It takes me a good 45 minutes to properly stat up a new monster (unless it's like CR0), so if you want to do that, do it beforehand. Otherwise, just re-skin existing stuff.

[Shining Wrath]

First you must define your campaign. How long, what levels, what setting.

For a new DM, you can use the Monster Manual monsters without homebrew. Or tweak something in a simple way, like a werewolf that is vulnerable to golden weapons rather than silver; you can do that on the fly.

When you start running the campaign you'll start generating NPCs. Keep most of them simple, "the old man with the eyepatch" sort of stuff. The DM screen sold by WotC actually has some tables on the left side for quick & easy NPC generation - names, characteristics, appearances. You might want to pick that up.

Your idea of having some encounters in your back pocket is a fine one, and you are correct that monsters of the same CR can usually be swapped depending on setting - but do be careful, as some CR are off. If you find yourself having made a mistake, killing all the players due to a mistake is not a good idea, much better to have some sort of outside force intervene. A second party exploring the same area can make sense - after all, something drew the player party there, why not another party? Some neutral types who will save the party but take all the treasure and insult them as n00bs can be a good running joke.

[Phawksin]

I know it takes a bit of time to actually build monsters or even just copy down the stats from the Monster Manual or the DM PDF if you don't have the hardcovers, but I think its impossibly handy to have that information before going in. Yeah, refluffing is great, but trying to "quickly" build an encounter at the table is setting up a disaster. My honest recommendation is to buy (or have players donate) a set of large index cards and copy down one to five monsters for each CR from 1/2 to 10 or so. Like knock a couple out every day at lunch for a week or something. Then copy down the table for XP Thresholds by character level (DMG 81). Once you have those resource you can build encounters in the time it takes you to do some simple addition and multiplication (IE still to long to do during a game, but in the minutes before a game or in a 5 min break is fine); they walk into a dungeon populated by goblins/kobolds/gnomes/children? Dig out your favorite small monster index cards and mix-and-match to get varied encounter difficulty refluffing absolutely everything as you see fit. Make sure you set aside a few extra index cards for popular monster spells (web, spike growth, fireball, ect) so you don't ever have to look any of that information up either. Then, if you really want a big major NPC that's going to be a serious villain or a reoccurring ally or something just follow the DMG guidelines for crafting a monster. Going from not using real monster stat blocks (from not owning the MM) to having a small set of specific stats I can draw from has been the most important learning experience of my DMing career.

[JAL_1138]

My advice to new DMs is generally "Start with modules." Good, generally-well-regarded ones. Lost Mine of Phandelver and Princes of the Apocalypse are pretty decent for 5e. Well, LMoP can be a bit lethal, but still good. They do most of the hard work for you. You don't have to run them as-is, though. You can just pilfer the prebuilt encounters, maps, treasure tables, and so forth. It's a good time-saver and helps you get a feel for DMing without driving yourself nuts with prepwork.

[MinotaurWarrior]

Creating encounters:

Use this (http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder) and take pictures / use a free pdf scanning app (camscanner?) to have the stats of environment / level appropriate beasties on hand. That's my system, and it seems to work fine.

[YCombinator]

This is all great advice, guys, thanks.

I had the impression encounter creation is likely the majority of what I need to figure out. I think I'll keep rereading the the DMG regarding encounter creation. I think having a few monsters of every relevant CR and the XP limit for an easy/medium/hard encounter for my party's current level handy at all times.

What about NPCs that I'm building out that may or may not be in combat? I've have about a dozen fully designed thematically. There will be many more to come. I could definitely do the normal PC character creation for every single one of them but that sounds time consuming. Especially if they never end up in combat. Do DMs generally just leave stats off of these characters and hope they don't end up in a fight? I think for many of them it's likely they will stay out but others will likely fight at some point. Should I do full PC character creation for just give them a few spells and calculate bonuses? Also is there a CR for a player character? If I were to, for example, roll up a level 3 fighter player character. What would his CR be?

I think maybe I'm answering my own question here. Make the characters as rich as I want thematically. As far as combat goes, if they get in a fight I can use a full PC character, just a monster copied from the manual but reskinned, or perhaps even just the simple monster stats with AC and bonus to hit from the table, depending on how lazy I want to be. I just order a Monster's Manual. I'll hopefully get a lot out of that.

What do folks plan out for non-combat encounters? I have some traps and puzzles planned. But not that many yet. Are there other elements of the game that DMs plan out mechanically and technically?

[Phawksin]

These are all really excellent questions, and you are about to get into "ask 5 DMs their opinion get 6 answers" territory. I'm sure you will get a lot of use out of the MM. In the back of that book is a set of "NPC stats" that will likely answer a lot of your problems. Personally I only tend to put any stats onto NPCs that I want to craft lovingly, and then only because I enjoy it. I try to shy away form the "DMPC" characters that end up in fights with the PCs (either as an ally or an opponent). In general my players don't just go all murderhobo on NPCs in town or whatever, so if that's a possibility then I'm sure having simple/generic NPC stat blocks is going to help a lot. But yeah, I likely have a dozen or two named NPC's with personalities and names and such in my little spiral and only 3 of them have stat blocks at all, even so much as ability scores or HP/AC and its never been a problem yet.

As for Encounter design and class levels to CR: that's one of my biggest complaints about the DMG and how that isn't really talked about. The paragraph that deals with it is like "good luck!" You could theoretically reverse engineer some of that information out of the NPC stat blocks in the DMG, but more than likely you will have to build the character and then calculate all the information for AC, Prof, DPR and whatall to the Monster Creation table in the DMG and see how it stacks up with what CR you need it to be, and then handwave like a wizard to make the numbers do what you want. Somebody else might have better information on that.

I have found the most important line of thinking when it comes to non-combat stuffis this: Anything the CHARACTERS have to accomplish should move the story forward weather a success or a failure. Anything the PLAYERS have to accomplish should provide a bonus only if they succeed. this means that ability checks and dice rolls should be the major focus. If you succeed in climbing the tower you get to the top, if you fail then you fall and X complication occurs (somebody hears you, you take damage, ect). When it comes to things like word or block puzzles, piecing clues together, anything that involves the players having to do the thinking and NOT rolling dice should be a nice boon but shouldn't be integral to the game moving forward. If the PC's can't get through the door because the wizard's player can't do a crossword your whole game is hosed. That being said, I think non-dice roll puzzles are an essential part of a DnD game and should be incorporated constantly. You can use google to look up word puzzles, simple math puzzles and generic "roleplaying game puzzles". If you know kids in school take their math homework and use it, only instead of comparing apples compare firebreathing statures or whatever. Even video games use stuff like lockpicking or event-time minigames to change the pace.

It sounds like you have a lot of story content for your PC's to interact with NPC's, so if that's what you want to do then rely on that heavily. Use all the political intrigue you can muster with all your well thought out NPC's and I'm sure your players will have a great time. And at the end of the day that's what its all about anyway, not perfect monster CR or stats or whatever else, so you are already there.

[Ninja_Prawn]

On building NPCs like PCs, the books literally say "good luck, suckers! Trollololol"

My advice is to build them like PCs, but convert them to stat blocks, either during the build or after. Be sure to strip out or simplify any complicated class abilities. That way, you can use the regular CR rules.

For example, *MINOR SPOILERS FOR FAERIE AFFAIR* I started the game off with an NPC, a Faerie Queen who is a bit of a fighter. I wanted to be prepared for the possibility of her getting into a fight, and I wanted her to be strong enough to overpower the PCs singlehanded if they tried to attack. Therefore, I was aiming for CR5. I built her as a Str-based TWF, and I knew what her weapons would be beforehand, so I figured out she'd need Extra Attack 2 (fighter 11) to get her damage output in the right range. Therefore I figured out how many ASIs she'd get and used that to build her ability scores. The rest was reverse-engineered to hit the defensive target. I cut all the fighter's class abilities like action surge and second wind; they don't belong on NPCs. Likewise, I cut the faerie's fluff abilities to save room on the stat block. I doubt she'd use them in a fight.

So, it's kind of a hybrid approach. Imagine what they'd be like if they were PCs, but build them as a stat block.