I'm new to DMing and really wanting to create my quests. Does and one have any tips for a struggling n00b. I've got ideas up the wahzoo. I'm looking for help on organizing them into a good night(s) of game play
I'm new to DMing and really wanting to create my quests. Does and one have any tips for a struggling n00b. I've got ideas up the wahzoo. I'm looking for help on organizing them into a good night(s) of game play
There've been a number of Dragon and on-line srticles about DMing, world and dungeon creation, I'm sure Paizonians more erudite than I can give you references.
Also, if you throw one or two of your ideas ideas out and a brief sketch of the victims, I mean PCs, I'm sure you'll get a huge and very useful response.
I don't know if it'll help at all but the way I build adventures has changed drastically over the years.
When I first started out all of my adventures were based around cool locations and, being an artist, I would draw them out and come up with a story as I drew. The advantages to this is that there is little "winging" that needs to be done in front of the players and everything tends tol be pre-scripted in a way.
It gradually evolved as I obtained a steady group that locations were significantly pre-planned ahead of time so I would have the concept of all of it before going in and mapping it out. THe advantage to this is that what needs to be decided is decided significantly in advance but there is still less room for maneuvering than the final option.
These days I just come up with what seems cool at the time on the spot and sketch, stat, and build as I DM... there have been a few spectacular failures with this method but more spectacular successes with this method than the other two combined. This has ultimate flexibility and I don't feel even a cursory constraint by my previously laid plans, however it is also very difficult to hold all the threads together at times.
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I found this...
But...
If you're willing to spend a little money, than I would highly suggest the following: The Kobold's Guide to Game Design
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
I'm new to DMing and really wanting to create my quests. Does and one have any tips for a struggling n00b. I've got ideas up the wahzoo. I'm looking for help on organizing them into a good night(s) of game play
It depends an awful lot on who you are and exactly how 'n00b' you are. I expect the various references people have posted above will be more succinct an eloquent than me. I'm no expert - nonetheless, some of the common errors I made as a beginner DM that I'd encourage you to avoid:
1) Make sure the adventure is interesting to your players as well as to you.
2) Don't fall into the trap of setting up a situation/story with one "correct" solution. Players never do what you expect them to - the 'obvious' solution to you can often be ruled out in the first five seconds of group discussion - then they spend an evening doing things you'd never dreamt of. A tempting path (it was for me anyhow) is to make sure all of their other attempts fail, waiting for them to hit on the correct solution. D&D is a collective story - you set up the problem but they solve it.
3) Don't stress about following the rules and thinking you need to know them all off the top of your head. If next week you've changed the rules for firing a crossbow, one handed, on a raft sailing down rapids whilst giants throw rocks at you...nobody cares. On the other hand, if you interrupt an exciting moment to spend ten minutes paging through rulebooks trying to find where it is covered, people care.
4) Don't be discouraged if you stuff it up. DMing is an extremely rewarding thing to master and you can't do anything rewarding well without first doing it badly for a little while. Leading onto...
5) Never talk about how you stuffed it up. Half the time, players don't notice when something you'd planned to be exciting climax actually fizzled - they enjoy it anyway, even though you thought it would be better. Telling them you screwed it up can reduce their enjoyment.
Hmm lots more of course, but those are some of the mistakes I regularly made as a beginning DM (Now I make a whole host of new errors).
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You don't say if you're new to the game as a whole, or just new to the DM position.
Experience as a player can help with DMing, even if it's only by making a list of bad games you've suffered, and deciding you're not going to make those same mistakes.
Similarly, players who've been DMs can be more forgiving of the work involved, and attempt to make PCs, backgrounds, and team-player decisions that mesh better with the feel of the campaign you're trying to build. Players who've never sat behind the screen can be dismissive of the frantic herding of cats that occurs off-stage, and more likely to be all 'Me, Me, Me!'.
What's the experience level and dynamic of the group?
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There isn't something as "giving out too many clues/hooks".
There isn't anything more game-killing as a puzzle/mystery that players can't solve.
Really.
I've lost count how many good games were ruined because our DM came up with some insanely contrived puzzle (which seemed trivial to him), and we spent hours burning out while trying to figure out the solution.
The DM was pissed because we failed at something he considered very easy (and as a result, he had no backup plan in case of us stumbling), and we were pissed because we couldn't progress (and we felt, like, dumb).
If you have that murder mystery / logical puzzle / mystical prophecy idea and really really want to incorporate it, make sure you provide enough clues, Knowledge check opportunities and helpful NPCs to help the players out in case they have a Bad Brain Day.
A partial PK against monsters will force players to rethink tactics and try again, a failure at puzzle-solving will make them give up and go home. You don't want that ! :)
The most important thing I have learned as a DM is keeping up the pace of the adventure. Some elements that slow down the pace (unsolvable puzzles and riddles, leafing through rulebooks, rules discussions) have already been mentioned.
Be sure to watch your players carefully during a session, and if they get bored (e.g. play WOW on their laptops, start sending text messages by cell phone, etc.) it is time to introduce something new, e.g. a new clue, a new NPC, a new danger, in order to recapture their interest.
An adventure is not a rigid structure. If it does not run well as written, be ready to improvise. E.g. if the PCs miss the all-important clue in room 2, shift it to another room.
One of the most boring sessions I remember from my early days as a DM was a group of PCs standing at a crossroads in a dungeon and logically trying to deduce which direction they should take for the most succes and the least danger. There was no way they could have, since it was just a crossroads. It lasted for more than an hour. And I was just waiting for the PCs to decide, since there was nothing scheduled in that adventure for that crossroads. Do not let that happen to you.
Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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One thing I try to do that has proven helpful over the years is to develop a basic plotline of how you want the adventure to go (starting point, motivation, NPCs, challenges, resolution), then outline it as a series of encounters (both role-playing and combat).
This provides a basic structure of the adventure you are creating, and can help you organize your thoughts. Then, you can flesh out each encounter in the outline in the order you desire.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is to be flexible. As previous posters have mentioned, players are unpredictable, which means you should be ready to revise your plot, or change your outline based on player choices.
One big mistake made by beginning DMs is a tendency to railroad players from one encounter to another because they follow the plotline too closely. Try to stay fluid, and if the players want to do encounters in a different order, or interact with an NPC is a way you didn't intend, you should be prepared for it.
Also, don't be surprised if your players take your flavor text/fluff more seriously than you intended. For example, if you describe a ruined temple/town that they pass as part of a journey, you may want to have a side quest ready in case the players want to investigate.
It may seem daunting the first time your create you adventure, but don't be discouraged. Once you put your thoughts down on paper, and begin working with your ideas after the first session with your players, I believe you will find adventure creation to be a very fun and rewarding exercise.
Hope this helps!
It's helpful to take unused encounters from adventures, scenarios you like and so on and have them in your pocket in case those side trips happen. If the pcs miss exploring a room or area in a dungeon or whatever that you're running, plan to use it later unless there's a really good reason for you to get them to continue to explore.
To avoid the crossroads problem Luna Eladrin mentioned, try having a list of encounters and hooks ready. Don't just show a crossroads, show things happening. In one direction there might be a convoy of wagons moving slowly along, drawn by oxen, while a mounted escort frowns at the pcs and then urges them on. In another the pcs can see a large number of crows circling in the sky. Lure them with interesting things that are dramatic but not blow up in your face.
There's lots of great advice here.
My suggestion: start small and work your way up. Cut your teeth on something like "stop the lizardmen from raiding the village" and work your way up to world-shattering conspiracies with twelve factions with their tentacles into each other.
If a PC asks "Can I do this?" don't say no; say "You can try."
Try to plan encounters around the PCs abilities, so they can shine once in a while. If you have a druid, put an angry bear in the way so they can use Wild Empathy (if they want to). If you have a cleric, undead so they try using Turn Undead. If a ranger, use their favored enemy (or better yet, work with your ranger so they choose a favored enemy that is a monster type you like to run). If you have a rogue, put in some sneak-attack-able foes. Etc. etc.
I REALLY like the low levels of play (1-3 or 4). I think it's fun to be threatened by rats. Not rat swarms, not dire rats, rats.
I agree, be flexible and fake it when you can. Let's say you plan for the party to encounter a group of street thugs in town, but the party decides to leave town to go explore. Well you don't have to throw out those stats, perhaps now the party encounters a group of highway men (with the street thugs' stats). Flavor is infinitely mutable, don't get locked into one type of description.
It's an absolute given that your players will do things you never thought of. Try to say "Yes, and ..." or "Yes, but ..." as often as possible.
They will, without exception think of things you never did, find ways around problems you never considered and use skills you didn't think were remotely relevant. Let them. Make them work for it, but don't stack the dice against them succeeding.
I still have nightmares from the first game I'd DMed in years (Devil Box - which we ran under PF Alpha). The party rolled insanely high Gather Info, Stealth and Diplomacy checks, which uncovered the whereabouts of the big bad two hours after arriving in town. They set off to the final encounter. Which was fine, except that I'd already decreed that as this is set in a small town at festival time they were not going to be taking weaponry and armour into the streets.
They were headed for a full set of zombies, devils and a psychotic wererat gnome with no defences. With a TPK on the horizon, through no real fault of their own, I had to do a lot of fast improvisation to get them back to the inn intact. Walls appeared out of nowhere, so did an unexpected ambush, followed shortly afterwards by an NPC captive ...
It all worked out in the end. I learned a lot that day :D
You may find it extremely helpful to buy an issue of Dungeon (they're on for a dollar right now, so how can you lose?) and read some of the lower-level adventures to get a hang for how encounters are set up and how to encorporate your wonderful story into something playable. This is reflected in "background" at the front of the adventure. You may also run one of the Dungeon adventures to see what your PCs enjoy so you can write adventures or an entire campaign suited to their unique personalities.
Don't be afraid to change up the pre-written adventures as you become comfortable--one lazy DM to others...
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Some good stuff above.
Some more tips:
Keep combat flowing. Know what your monsters/NPC's are going to do, and strive to resolve that as fast as possible. Aid the PC's with math/dice/spell lookups when necessary to proceed to the next turn. Nothing kills interest faster than waiting for someone to decide what to do, then waiting on the resolution of that action.
Pre-drawn maps (whether by yourself or one of the various map-packs) make it a lot easier to put the ground underneath the PC's, quickly.
Templates (Steel Sqwire makes good ones) make for easy spell placement and resolution.
As far as encounter design, I like to look at it like this:
Who is challenging the PC's? (Individual, Organization, Deity, etc..)
What are their resource/commitment level (Crimeboss, street thugs, army of angels)
Why are they going after the PC's (or conversely, why are the PC's going after them)
Where is the encounter likely to happen (and what kind of terrain do I want to use there...lava pits, underwater fights, long falls, trapped floors, massive arena, etc.)
When will this happen? (night time ambush, public spectacle at dawn, random encounter from point A-to-B..)
once those have been decided (feel free to be loose with some of them, or change them based on player decisions), you can design NPC's and choose/design monsters to fill the criteria.
Puzzles and riddles I generally don't use, as they annoy my group and I more than be fun.
Traps are good, assuming you have a Rogue or other trapfinder...keeps the party on it's toes and allows for easier dungeon/house adventure pacing, but can become monotonous (ho hum, another 10' spike pit trap, DC 20 Search/ etc....) If you're going to use them, switch em around, or make them believable to the area (pungi pits and trip wires in the jungle/swamp, holes with dangerous monsters in them, horrible rooms of death in the Lich's tomb, etc..
Finally, be prepared with a handful of encounters that can slot into the adventure setting you have, on top of what you have scripted in. This is to account for when the party tunnels through walls, goes teleporting all around, fails to find the actual entrance to the dungeon, kills the primary NPC helper, or one-shots the BBEG. You can add in a floating encounter (I like to use somewhat incongruous monsters, like Half-Fiend Tyrannosaurs, or Phrenic Beholders to provide some extra time/challenge, or to shore up a previously weaker-than-expected encounter. Conversely, you can use the wandering monster to assist the party if it looks like they're getting their butt kicked.
Done subtly, the party will never even realize they were assisted, and you can maneuver them back towards the adventure you had planned all along.
Finally, check out RoleplayingTips.Com for plenty of new and experience DM suggestions/hints.
good luck,
-t
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First things first. My current DM needs to read this thread. He is literally in violation all of the tips mentioned here.
Heres some tips that are a direct result from the game I'm playing in now:
--It doesn't have to be complicated to be fun. Don't try to write a James Patterson novel. As some have said, you can assume the players will 'get' all of your clues and puzzles. Trust me, they won't more often then they will.
--Keep the game moving. Your the DM, its your game, you are in control. Don't sit there staring at your players waiting for them to do something. You have to put it out there for them to react to.
--Also mentioned before. You don't have to be an expert on the monsters, but do a little research. Nothing bogs down the game like the DM flipping through the book for 20 min, trying to decide what the monster is going to do next.
--If you're going to do some roleplaying encounters, have an idea of whats going to be said. If an NPC has some info to tell, let him tell it. Don't make the players play 20 questions, or jump thru hoops just to get some info that they need to know to keep the game going.
I have a lot more, but that's a good start. Yeah, the game I'm in now is getting pretty bad.
This thread is chock full for great advice. My addition comes in a comment on an above post and a new suggestion to the conversation, all summed up in one word:
Read.
First, the comment. Read Dungeon. Looking back on the first campaigns I ran before Dungeon, when I started a group in high school from scratch and no senior DM to learn under, they were terrible. Then I got Dungeon and started looking at how the "professionals" write adventures. It radically altered my games for the better. There is a pitfall, however. I tend to be a little anal retentive, so I tried to write up my adventures pretty much like you would find them in the pages of Dungeon. I wasted a lot of time doing that. Dungeon has to convey every nuance and every detail, the very sense and spirit of an adventure, in cold print. It's different when you design your own adventures. You know the stuff more or less by heart, because you made it. The goal, I think, should be to design an adventure like Dungeon does, but just keep whatever sparse notes are necessary to jog your memory as you actually run it.
Second, the new direction. Read books. Not just fantasy books. In fact, I've heard others say avoid reading fantasy books, and I don't necessarily disagree (not that it's always true; George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is giving me tons of ideas and radically changing my games). My studies in college tend towards medieval literature, which gives me a well-source to pull from which is related to fantasy but not inherently filled with the tropes of the genre. Also, I just finished reading Shakespeare's King Lear, and re-reading Macbeth, for a summer literature course. These things have filled my mind with plots, characters, personalities, twists, and all kinds of other cool things. Steal liberally (that is good advice for any DM in gerenal, as well). If you like something, rip it off wholecloth, change the names to protect the innocents, throw in a half-fiend were-crocodile ettin, and go!
Don't have the time or interest to read? Watch movies, any movie, and take the plots and characters. Watch the history channel, or even the travel channel; take what you see, add dragons and wizards, and boom! You're good to go.
Most importantly, don't sweat the small stuff and have fun. DMing is an art, and as such it takes time to hone your skills and become truly proficient at it. So just get in there, learn as you go, and do it!
Thanks for all the tips and word of wisdom guys. I found all for your reply's very helpful.
Good luck with your campaign!
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If a PC asks "Can I do this?" don't say no; say "You can try."
Try to plan encounters around the PCs abilities, so they can shine once in a while. If you have a druid, put an angry bear in the way so they can use Wild Empathy (if they want to). If you have a cleric, undead so they try using Turn Undead. If a ranger, use their favored enemy (or better yet, work with your ranger so they choose a favored enemy that is a monster type you like to run). If you have a rogue, put in some sneak-attack-able foes. Etc. etc.
An excellent suggestion. Heck, that's been a cornerstone of my DM style for years.
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DRAGON ROOTS MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 (brand new) has an in-depth 10-page article on an adventure design methodology. It also has a ready-made adventure, including town map and campaign map, to play a several-session adventure using this style of adventure writing. This particular organization method seems really useful if you've got great ideas but are asking how to put it all together. Its downloadable from PAIZO as a .pdf.