Patrigon's page

First off, apologies everyone! I got really busy with schoolwork and forgot to come back and post about my first night as DM. I'm not sure if this message will come too late for any of the original posters to see it, but I will post it anyway, just in case.

First I will say that everybody had fun. The experienced player was doing a lot to help everyone get into the roleplaying by doing a lot of roleplaying himself. He also commented that I did a better job than he generally does by giving the NPCs personality. I think that the Pathfinder book was good in this in helping me know what sorts of personalities the people should have.

Here are a couple of things I'm still having trouble with. Since the Pathfinder book didn't say much about loot on the monsters and so on, I had no idea that I was supposed to be giving loot to the players. After the first adventure, which took us up to the point before the Glassworks, the only rewards I had given the players were the horses for the boar hunt (and the gold reward for the players who didn't want to hunt boars). I need to get a good system for rewarding players.

The second occurrance that I was unsure of was in the scenario where Shayliss Vinder attempted to seduce the player, leading to the encounter with her father. The player made a successful diplomacy roll, so I had the situation die down and gave the player the CR 2 experience reward. Then we came to find that he got more experience from that single encounter than the rest of the group got from the all the battles combined! I'm not sure if all the players were supposed to divide that experience (doesn't make sense to me if they do) or if the reward is just that high because the penalty would be great if the player killed Ven. Any thoughts?

So next up is the Glassworks. Something I'm not sure about is how much the players should really explore all of the 23 rooms that don't have much in them. Should I just have them quickly walk through the place, describing the states of the rooms to them as they go?

Any other suggestions for any of the stuff my group is coming up on? Our next game night is in two weeks so I have plenty of time to prepare.

Thanks, Kelso. I'll start working on my notes now. The game is tonight and I think it is going to go well. I'll update, maybe tomorrow, to let any interested parties know what I think of my first time DM'ing.

Wow, thanks a lot, KaeYoss! That was a lot of very helpful and inspiring advice. I will keep it all in mind. Right now I'm creating my "map" for the games to take place on. When I get done with it, I'll get some music ready, and I'll spend most of tomorrow making sure I know my rules pretty well. I'll take enough notes to handle a little beyond how far I expect the players to get tomorrow night.

Thanks, everyone, for all the advice! I'll try to read through everything and take a lot of notes for myself about how I plan to present it. The idea of telling more to locals than to visitors sounds interesting also. I might do that in an email to the group in advance, because our time together is a little bit limited. If anybody else makes a comment, I will be sure to read it. Our first game should be Saturday night (as long as one in the group doesn't decide to visit his family for 4th of July).

Hi everyone,

My friends and I decided to start playing D&D pretty soon. One of them has a few years of experience from 2nd edition, another has a pretty good deal of experience with more recent stuff. The two others and myself have only played 2 or 3 games each. I am going to be the group's DM, and this will be my first time.

A friend of one of the guys in the group recommended Pathfinder to us, so I bought Burnt Offerings. The book has a little bit less instructions than I expected (I guess it assumes the DM knows what they are doing a little more than I do). I am wondering if I am supposed to read a lot of the stuff or just mention it or if the players should read some of it in advance or... the list goes on there.

For example, at the beginning of Burnt Offerings, the players are at a festival in Sandpoint. Am I supposed to tell them all about the speeches and the releasing of the fireflies and the free lunch, or do I just start with them standing out where the goblin attack begins?

It seems like a lot of the information is meant for the DM alone. I suppose that this information will slowly be revealed to the PCs later on.

Anyway, aside from my specific questions here, any advice for a first-time DM would be welcomed.

Thanks,
Patrigon