New DM Looking For Some Advice

[Name2020]

After playing a couple campaigns of D&D that each lasted for a pretty mediocre amount of time I decided to try my hand at DMing. Thing is I don't even know where to start. Should I find my players then make the campaign/world around them, or should I create the world/campaign and then find my players and just try to jam their characters in there somewhere so they feel connected? I also tried my hand at making some world maps (my 6 year old brother could have probably done better than me). Do you need a layout of your world to organize your thoughts? I also don't know what to use as the main problem of my world. After doing my research into all the different planes and monsters, my brain is flooded with ideas. Is an ancient, all powerful warlock trying to make turn the whole world into his phylactery, or is the Shadowfell seeping into the Mortal Plane and infecting people? There are to many ideas and not enough brain power to organize or pick which ones I want to use and how I want to use them.

TL;DR My brain not strong enough to DM and I need smart people to help me.

[thoroughlyS]

My personal preference is to find players first, then work with them to make the world. You may or may not have heard of Session 0: Basically dedicate your first meeting to laying down ground rules and getting everyone on the same page. I would recommend coming up with a few broad ideas about campaigns that you'd be interested in running, and then running them by the players. "Is everyone down for a 'generic' high fantasy world with a pseudo-medieval feel? Do you want a more magic-integrated world, where everyone has a basic understanding of what magic is and does? Do you want to be pirates?" Stuff like that.

Figure out what people want, and then find out what people want to be. If one of your players decides to be a less commonly played race, you can then work with them to decide if that race is common or not in your world, and how people in that would might treat them. "I want to be an Aarakocra, and I kind of want to be seen as exotic. I want to be a Dark Elf, but want to be accepted as part of society (not seen as dangerous). I want to be a Gnome, but people know more about Halflings, and just kind of mistake me for one." Ask how they want the world to react to them, and tell them whether you want to do that or not.

This is an important point. You are the DM, and you can say "no". If you don't think something will work for your table, then you can work with your players to find a solution. Equally important is that you are still a player, and your main goal should be trying to make the game fun for everyone (including yourself).

Once everyone has an idea of what the campaign is going to be, and who they are going to play, ask what they want from the game. Lots of fights? Lots of treasure? Lots of puzzles? Lots of NPCs that they can be friends with? Take notes and be honest with yourself if you think you can handle that stuff.

Lastly, there are resources out there for managing things. You mentioned making a few world maps (and not being overly excited about the results), there are tons of tutorials for making more realistic world maps, or tools that automatically generate and populate things. There are generators for all kinds of stuff, and communities that make lists and lists of ideas to get you started.

[EggKookoo]

TL;DR My brain not strong enough to DM and I need smart people to help me.

I highly recommend running some published stuff first. DMing is a combination of disciplines. A: game moderation and refereeing -- being the NPCs and actually playing the game live at the table. B: rules mastering -- knowing when to call for checks (and pick the DCs), making rulings, and creating homebrew rules that don't clash with the existing mechanics. And C: worldbuilding -- creating or at least curating the setting, the backstory, the world mythology, and so forth, which may mean making your own or using an established setting (often a combination of both).

If you're new to DMing, try to focus on no more than two of these things at once. One if you can. If you use a published setting and just take it as it comes without trying to customize it too much, most of the work of C is done for you. Likewise, resist the urge to homebrew if you can at first, and for rulings, just keep it simple, so you can minimize the amount of B you need to do. This leaves you mostly focused on A, which in my experience is the most demanding. When something unexpected comes up, it's usually in the realm of A. It can be in the realm of B, but if you understand the ability check system and how to pick a sane DC, it's not so bad.

Finally, don't try to create the epic be-all-end-all campaign right out of the gate. Anyone who wants to write fiction is often told to make short stories before trying to tackle a novel. This is good advice and it applies to DMing. Run some simple dungeons that last no more than one session (maybe two), and maybe try to get your players to not even get married to their PCs at first and think of the games as standalone episodes. Once you've done a few of these, it might be time to think about a larger ongoing campaign. By then you'll have enough experience with A and B that dealing with C is easier.

[firelistener]

All good points being made so far. DMing is hard if you want to do it well, and time-consuming more than anything else. If you want to use your own stuff instead of modules, I also suggest keeping it simple. Try to use the "5 room dungeon" format for your first few adventures. Dungeons are much simpler than doing complex or open hexcrawls in general, in my experience, just because they naturally limit the players' possible actions.

[Composer99]

In addition to recommending published content, what's more I would recommend starter adventures, such as any of the starter box adventures, Sunless Citadel, or anything that tickles your fancy on DM's Guild, DrivethruRPG, or what-have-you.

Most of the big published campaigns are just that - big campaigns, and probably not great to cut your teeth on. In addition, a lot of the 5e campaigns are reasonably free-form, up to a point, making them even more difficult to run when you're a new DM.

[Zarrgon]

You want to start small, so no world building. You just want to make a small town and couple miles around it. That's it. You want to have a basic setting done first, so go ahead and do it.

You want a basic plot, and again keep it small. You want a threat to the town and farmland, not the whole world. What you really want out of first adventure or two is a bit of using all the rules, so everyone including you gets the hang of them.

[SpikeFightwicky]

TL;DR My brain not strong enough to DM and I need smart people to help me.

First off, give yourself more credit 🙂

As people have mentioned, start small! Have a general idea of the world, and as the players progress, grow the world with them. However, the players might ask about "big cities" or forms of governance for backgrounds (my character's a noble from a prominent merchant house... what city is a real trading hub?)

Fun tip: ask for character backgrounds, and use that to help build the world. Let them make up stuff and incorporate it.

So... what do you like in your stories? Big epic fantasy, mystery and intrigue, etc... start with what you know and what you like... then balance it with what your players like. You like demonic cultists but your players like defending toens against orcs? Well, you can make orcs that are being influenced and empowered by a demonic cult leader and have the players unravel it as they go along. But yeah, start small, and if you have a huge idea for mid-campaign, think of how a starting group can eventually get there from level 1. High level plot, and get the nitty gritty figured out as you get there.

Example: you're keen on the players deposing a BBEG despot who gained his powers through a devil's bargain. How does an orc attack tie into it? Orcs -> influenced by demon cultist -> demons at war with BBEG -> characters caught in the middle and eventually have to end demon invasion as they depose BBEG. So it starts small and grows as the players become more involved in the world.

[Man_Over_Game]

After playing a couple campaigns of D&D that each lasted for a pretty mediocre amount of time I decided to try my hand at DMing. Thing is I don't even know where to start. Should I find my players then make the campaign/world around them, or should I create the world/campaign and then find my players and just try to jam their characters in there somewhere so they feel connected? I also tried my hand at making some world maps (my 6 year old brother could have probably done better than me). Do you need a layout of your world to organize your thoughts? I also don't know what to use as the main problem of my world. After doing my research into all the different planes and monsters, my brain is flooded with ideas. Is an ancient, all powerful warlock trying to make turn the whole world into his phylactery, or is the Shadowfell seeping into the Mortal Plane and infecting people? There are to many ideas and not enough brain power to organize or pick which ones I want to use and how I want to use them.

TL;DR My brain not strong enough to DM and I need smart people to help me.

I've found my best games have been ones I've designed, and around my players' desires for the gameplay.

So if they want a lot of socialization, politics, and espionage, it doesn't matter how good of a combat encounter you create since that's not what they're playing for. Of course, you want a bit of combat in a game like DnD who's mechanics are all centered around it being a focal point, but limit it's use to accent things in the story rather than using it as a core piece to a session.

You'll have more fun overall developing your game towards your players rather than having players play your game. This is because your players will create more content just by trying to interact with the world. They come up with their own decisions and assumptions about the world, coming up with new ideas and such just by them stating their expectations.

Player: "Hmm...is there a trap?"
-DM checks notes, realizes there isn't one.
DM: "...Make a Perception Check for me..."
Player:"Hah, friggin' called it!"

This kind of stuff will happen all of the time, and leaning into it will make your players feel like you're 2 steps ahead of them instead of just following their lead. This becomes easier if you're already trying to make the game the players' world.

That being said, you want to build the foundation of the world as your own.

My suggestion for that is to start small, with a high-impact scenario for the players to get involved in.

I've used flaming robots from hell falling from the sky on top of a city, which eventually led to them to try to carve a burning ritual circle around the city to sacrifice it as a summoning circle for their lord.
I've used the players busting out of prison after being imprisoned by a corrupt and racist king, which eventually led to the king's corruption being caused from a plague from the Astral Plane that turns people into insane monsters that the players slowly discover after their escape.

So just come up with some big, scary, high-impact scenario, then develop the WHY's over time once you start getting comfortable with the initial concept yourself. Like what I mentioned before, it makes it feel like it was something you had planned from the very beginning.

New DMs stress out over the world, the encounters, the plot, etc., and then set the players on the DM's predefined path because of "realism" or because that's where the effort and content is in.

Experienced DMs realize DMing isn't much more than smoke and mirrors, and use it to their advantage.

The more effort you put into preplanning a scenario, the more you're going to force your players to play that scenario. It'll feel like you run risk of wasting scenarios that your players ignore, or putting a lot of work into plot points your players will never experience, and so you'll burn yourself out despite doing very little that's actually relevant.

That's not saying that planning isn't good, but plan in broad strokes, and only make things specific when you know that making it up on the fly isn't going to turn out as well. For example, local locations (cities, ruins, bandit hideouts) are always good to plan in advance since you can just add/remove stuff as-needed to suit the plot or tension for whenever the players make that location relevant.

[SpikeFightwicky]

{Snip}

This, basically! Use what your players give you. Nothing wrong with switching things on the fly going by what your players are giving you if you feel it works. I once swapped the campaign's BBEG because the players followed the clues to a conclusion I never thought of, but it was so good I went with it! Improv is an important DM skill in my opinion. Your players will mess with your ideas in ways you never thought of, and you have to be able to roll with it.

[Name2020]

I really am thankful for all the help and support that you guys have been giving me. However, I still have two more questions. One, what are some good sites to use to keep all my notes and world stuff in check (I was thinking of just using a google doc but I have noticed they get more laggy the bigger their file size is), and two, is it necessary for me to create a large map of the whole world for my players use. Can I just make up some excuse for there being no maps, or leave them with just a mental image of the world?

[BurgerBeast]

I recommend you keep an open mind, build bottom-up, and build around the players.

Once you know who the characters are, build a starting town. Keep it very simple: a name for the town, an inn/tavern, a provisioner, and then any other buildings that might be relevant (if there’s a cleric in the group, make a temple to his or her god).

You only need one quest giver with a hook that you can tie to the characters and one site for the first adventure. Example: cattle have been getting killed. A desperate farmer who is worried about his family starving in the winter pleads with the characters to investigate. Maybe there’s a beast in the woods or maybe it’s a group of kobolds who are located in the local mine. Whatever.

That’s it. Seriously.

But then, you can do some simple extra things to make it better.

1. Read through the character sheets to find hooks for each character. Make encounters that relate to those hooks. Put them in a random table so they can happen at any time.

2. If you wish, build a random encounter table for the area around the town.

3. If you have the time, prep 1 or two other sites and hooks just like the first one, so that the characters will have agency to choose which quest to pursue, and let the characters choices in town determine which quests they encounter. For example, if the cattle have been going missing, a caravan needs guards, and the apothecary needs a rare herb from a secret grove, then the characters could encounter those quest givers in any order depending on what they choose to do in town.

Then it’s time to stock things. Don’t forget treasure! Stock it first. Then make the bad guys use it if it makes sense.

Stock traps or fiddly bits (portcullises, platforms, levers for doors) next if you want them. Players love this crap.

Stock cool discoveries such as rare herbs for herbalists, Druid markings that give information about locations, etc.

Then stock the monsters.

I usually like to have one mysterious thing happen in the first session as well, and depending on player reactions I can bring it into the game later. Maybe a shadowy figure follows them from a distance, or they see someone sneaking into a seemingly abandoned building, or there is a new person in town and others are questioning this person’s motives.

Hope this helps.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Start small, my first game I DMed started as a single town of a noble that searched for unique individuals to do some jobs(the party was all monster races so they were very unique).


I started small, after 5 sessions the world got bigger as I understood more about how I want to run a game and how my players want to play(there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of feedback I asked from my players).

For my second world I used a random generated map(I will edit the link soon) and wrote a short text about each location on the map.

I told my players, "This is the world and want everyone in it knows, what do you want to do in it?"

And this is how I started my second game.


If you have good knowledge about an existing world like forgotten realms it may be easier for you to run something there instead of an original world.

That is my experience and I recommend you to start small and to get your players feedback.
Just asking them which of your initial ideas they prefer will give you a direction.

[EggKookoo]

I really am thankful for all the help and support that you guys have been giving me. However, I still have two more questions. One, what are some good sites to use to keep all my notes and world stuff in check (I was thinking of just using a google doc but I have noticed they get more laggy the bigger their file size is), and two, is it necessary for me to create a large map of the whole world for my players use. Can I just make up some excuse for there being no maps, or leave them with just a mental image of the world?

For notes and stuff, someone on this forum suggested using OneNote a while back. I've been using it for my DM stuff, and I made PC character sheet notes which I share with the players (they'll need MS accounts, I think, but those are free). The cool thing about the character sheets is they're centralized, so if they're modified I can see the changes, and who made them.

OneNote is hardly the best app in the world. It has a lot of annoying quirks that you have to get used to (no find/replace, really MS?). But there's a free version and if you already have Office you can grab OneNote 2016, which is significantly better (still, no find/replace?). I'd love a better alternative but it's hard to beat for the price.

[Man_Over_Game]

I really am thankful for all the help and support that you guys have been giving me. However, I still have two more questions. One, what are some good sites to use to keep all my notes and world stuff in check (I was thinking of just using a google doc but I have noticed they get more laggy the bigger their file size is), and two, is it necessary for me to create a large map of the whole world for my players use. Can I just make up some excuse for there being no maps, or leave them with just a mental image of the world?

For the early parts, you'll probably want to railroad your players a little bit so that they develop a working history together, as well as get them acclimated to the table/world.

A good DM thing to know is that your players will only pay attention to the stuff you talk about. Kinda like those old cartoons where you know exactly what's going to move in the scene because of the extra detail.

Well, your players won't need to know every possible location when the only one that's relevant is "north". If you mention a few other cities in the vicinity, they'll think those are options, so...don't do that.

You'll eventually want a rudimentary map with major cities, but that shouldn't be necessary in your first 2-3 sessions, and that gives you more than enough time to solidify what you want the world to be doing in your own head.

[Sorinth]

After playing a couple campaigns of D&D that each lasted for a pretty mediocre amount of time I decided to try my hand at DMing. Thing is I don't even know where to start. Should I find my players then make the campaign/world around them, or should I create the world/campaign and then find my players and just try to jam their characters in there somewhere so they feel connected? I also tried my hand at making some world maps (my 6 year old brother could have probably done better than me). Do you need a layout of your world to organize your thoughts? I also don't know what to use as the main problem of my world. After doing my research into all the different planes and monsters, my brain is flooded with ideas. Is an ancient, all powerful warlock trying to make turn the whole world into his phylactery, or is the Shadowfell seeping into the Mortal Plane and infecting people? There are to many ideas and not enough brain power to organize or pick which ones I want to use and how I want to use them.

TL;DR My brain not strong enough to DM and I need smart people to help me.

In terms of world building there are a couple questions you have to answer and as others have said most of these answers should come from a session 0 with the players.


First is how sandboxy is the game going to be? The more of an open sandbox the game is the more world building you need to do. You don't have to build everything at the start of the campaign, but you'd probably want a decent overview of the sandbox to start with and then you'll fill in the details as the campaign progresses. You'll often get a good idea of where the party is headed at the end of a session so the detailed world building takes place between sessions and you are essentially building out the world as the players travel through it. If it's more railroady campaign, then you know the path they will be taking and so don't have to flesh things out very much outside of that path.

Second question is what level are they starting at, this is especially important for a sandbox game since the size of the sandbox often depends on level. Without magical travel the PCs can't move easily from place to place which gives you plenty of time to flesh things out as you go, whereas with magical travel you need the world built out enough that when they teleport to an unexpected location mid-session you have enough details to flesh things out on the fly. Also note that at low-level it's a lot easier to keep the PCs occupied with multiple possible plot/adventure hooks which can often be in a very small area, at higher level the PCs are facing nation/world altering threats and so if there is more then one those threats have to be spread out so they don't interfere with each other.

One tip in terms of world building when you have a million cool epic adventures and don't know which ones to actually do, drop in some clues/information about them but do it in a way that they could turn out to be false. Whichever ones your players actually show an interest in or decide to follow up with is the one you actually do, the rest either resolved themselves thanks to another adventuring group or were just rumors that turned out to be false, or the prophecy is actually still 100s of years from coming true, etc...

[Composer99]

I really am thankful for all the help and support that you guys have been giving me. However, I still have two more questions. One, what are some good sites to use to keep all my notes and world stuff in check (I was thinking of just using a google doc but I have noticed they get more laggy the bigger their file size is), and two, is it necessary for me to create a large map of the whole world for my players use. Can I just make up some excuse for there being no maps, or leave them with just a mental image of the world?

For (2) I would avoid a world map early on. If you want a map at all, stick with a small area in which their first adventures will take place - no bigger than, say, a few days' march from one end to the other.

Depending on your players' love or at least tolerance of description, consider bringing the world to life by talking about what they see, hear, and smell.