I just DMed my first real session last night. I personally feel that I did an awful job, but my players said they had fun and are willing to work with me while I improve my technique. I'm going to tell my story here and would love any kind of feedback that will help me do my players justice with this campaign.
Characters:
-Ichigo, human fighter. The player wants to play a character who evolves from kid from a small town to true hero. He lives with his little sister named Mia and his grandpa, who is another player character, Mr. Crane.
-Mr. Crane, human bard. He is an old man who gives his grandson, Ichigo a hard time, drops to the floor every time something dangerous might happen, and is always looking out for opportunity to profit.
-Archimedes, warforged alchemist. I updated the race a little for Pathfinder because the player had the great idea that he could flavor his potions and such as instead being small gears and parts he uses to alter his mechanics temporarily. I also added the "Repair" line of spells from 3.5 to his formulae list at the same levels he gets the respective "Cure" spells. He was built by an eccentric old man living in town who's original name seems to have been replaced with Doc Brown by my players. I accepted this name change willingly.
-Huck, human rogue. He's only been living in town for about a week, but he's already swindled his way into the house of Sheena, a somewhat rich, but incredibly naive lady. He's pretty much the last person she should ever trust, but he's a practiced con artist and like I said, she is incredibly naive. If you didn't guess yet, he intends to somehow get his hands on her small fortune.
-Chyuu, human (kind of) monk. This player is actually the little sister of Archimedes' player and frequently has anime conventions to go to on Saturday nights when we play. Because of this, I thought of the idea that she could play a summoned entity of some kind, who is summoned from a magical harp whenever she happens to be at the table. When she can't make it to the game, the harp needs to recharge or something and conveniently is ready to be played again the next time she is present. This allows her to customize her character in a way she finds exciting with silly animal ears, strange hair colors, tails, etc, without it being as strange as it would be under normal circumstances, and it also helps her frequent absences make sense in the context of the story.
The town these characters live in is small and situated in a slightly wooded area at the base of a mountain containing a shrine dedicated to the wind. I wasn't prepared with a good name for it, so Chyuu's player started calling it Townsville. I have a feeling this name will stick.
Next post: the campaign begins! D:
The first thing to remember is your audience. You aren't publishing it, and it won't need mass appeal or even any respect. All that matters is the players, if they like living in Townsville with Doc Brown, then alls the better, if they don't, well- fix it. But if they're happy you shouldn't be embarrassed about anything.
This goes beyond naming convetions. It relfects on everything- if the players want an otherwise medieval setting with high magic and magic-mart, so be it, even if the large amounts of magic items would turn a medieval economy on it's head. If they want to play realistic and grim, that's fine too. It's not art, it's fun. (A painful realization for an art student like me). So don't worry if your not the best, as long as they're enjoying themselves. I should note that does not mean you shouldn't improve, I'm just saying that you shouldn't expect a perfect middle-earth.
Check out Gnome Stew. it's an excellent source of info for GM's of all abilities. if you search around you should find thier first-time DM sections pretty easy, and I found them pretty helpful.
Thanks for the advice! I spent about an hour typing up the first half of my session, but I made the mistake of assuming that the submit button would submit my post instead of taking me to the store blog, leaving no evidence of my work. I'll get my story up as soon as I can work up the will to type it all again :|
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Thanks for the advice! I spent about an hour typing up the first half of my session, but I made the mistake of assuming that the submit button would submit my post instead of taking me to the store blog, leaving no evidence of my work. I'll get my story up as soon as I can work up the will to type it all again :|
I hate it when that happens...Ctrl-A Ctrl-C is your friend
On second thought, it might be better to just summarize and highlight a few notable moments instead of the massive play by play I had typed out earlier anyways.
I started the game with a (slightly) normal day in town and actually got a lot of great roleplay between my players. Our typical games don't generally have much free roleplay time in them, but my players seemed to enjoy goofing off with each other in town to establish their characters before the action started.
Of all the NPCs I mentioned, I think only two of them are actually worth mentioning. I normally have a slightly hard time exerting my own character's personality when I'm just playing instead of DMing, but for some reason I had how Doc Brown acts completely nailed down. He's eccentric, avoids danger, and solves everyday problems with super complex mathematical equations. I had him put the finishing touches on Archimedes at the beginning of the session with help from Ichigo to lift a heavy part. While Archimedes was following Ichigo around town, there was one point where he was showing off what he could do to Mr. Crane and actually tossed a bomb in town. There wasn't any terrible damage aside from a smoking hole in the ground, but it drew a bit of a crowd. Doc Brown, knowing full well what the source of the explosion was, attempted to diffuse the crowd by insisting that it must have been a cat. Later, after I had the town attacked by a race I made of elf like humanoids with some slight reptile traits, Doc Brown hid under the desk in his house until the PCs fought them off, then came out with his crossbow and rusty sword pretending he was just about to help. He coughs a lot on purpose and complains about his hips and such to make himself seem more old and incapable than he actually is.
The other NPC that didn't turn out completely 2-dimensional in the end is Felix. He has lived in town for a few months and occasionally comes across interesting magical artifacts. I introduced him by having him show off his newest find, the harp that summons Chyuu. I made him intending for him to travel with the party, but serving no combat role and having little to no bearing on where the PCs go or what they do (definitely trying to avoid making him a DMPC). I have some plans for him story wise for later, but for now he serves two purposes for me. One, he is the one with the harp and gives Chyuu a friendly NPC to interact with. Two, I plan to include a bunch of puzzles in this campaign and Felix will be how I deliver small hints to the players to move things along if they get stumped. The first "dungeon" was, surprise, the wind shrine, although it was probably the shortest dungeon I've ever seen. When I had Felix offer to go with, the players said they weren't interested in bringing this flat character with them for no reason, so I started personifying him like Professor Layton and they decided that made him cool enough to come with. I also conceded that he was missing two fingers on one hand since one of my players happened to have an old Warhammer Fantasy character named Felix who lost those two fingers.
Next I want to talk about some of the things my players did and how I reacted.
I originally introduced Ichigo and Archimedes by having Ichigo help Doc Brown lift the final parts so he could bolt them on, after which Doc Brown asked Ichigo to take Archimedes with him around town for a bit. I had Ichigo's sister Mia find them outside and suggest that they go show grandpa. Enter Mr. Crane. They knocked on his door and he immediately asked if they brought him his oranges through the door. Rather than risk his wrath, they decided to go find some before entering.
I decided that where they found some was next to the building Huck happened to be in and I gave him a perception check to see a robot giving a teenager a boost up to pick some oranges. I was a little vague, but Huck assumed he was in Sheena's house (lady he has been staying with). He also assumed that the orange trees belonged to her (I actually didn't mean for it to be that way, but I decided to run with it). Huck called Sheena over because some kids were stealing her oranges, but by the time she got to the window, Archimedes had decided that it would be easier to just uproot the entire tree and bring the whole thing to Mr. Crane. I have no clue what the DC to pull a tree out of the ground would be, but they were having fun and it had little impact on the game itself so I just let it happen.
Huck asked Sheena for some money intending to go to the bar. I rolled poorly on her sense motive and since she's so naive I figured she's probably got negatives to the skill anyways (didn't actually have her stated out, but it made sense) so she assumed that he had a plan to get her tree back. He saw the tree thieves down the street on Mr. Crane's porch and began walking towards them. Mr. Crane told his grandson to put the tree back and after accidentally covering his porch in leaves and squished oranges, they did just that (Sheena will of course assume that Huck managed to get it back for her).
Chyuu's player arrived a bit late due to a convention, which is why she wasn't involved in these initial shenanigans. I'm glad my players enjoyed playing like this for a little while to set the tone and establish their characters before the action started. It also gave me some time to get used to being in the DM chair. I've got another story or two like this before I had the town get attacked and started introducing plot elements. I might type up what happened, but I executed it poorly so it's a trash story so far. I'm thinking I might just have everything that happened after this day of roleplay be a nightmare and start again when the characters wake up in the morning with a (hopefully) better story for them.
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I just DMed my first real session last night. I personally feel that I did an awful job, but my players said they had fun and are willing to work with me while I improve my technique.
Player fun always trumps DM self-criticism.
As for your last post, re calling it a dream and starting again, don't bother.Players are far more forgiving of first session storylines than you'd think. It may be the oldest trick in the book to have them be attacked, beat the attackers, and agree to be best buddies, but most players are willing to switch off their normal suspicions of NPCs, and magically 'know' who's a fellow PC, in order to get the game going.
You will make mistakes, and will continue to make mistakes even after you've been running for decades. I still sometimes stack two buffs that shouldn't stack, or forget a resistance that should have applied.
Sometimes it can be corrected mid-combat, other times, it's best to just let it lie (monster went down too easy, maybe he was already injured or sick, give em a bit less xp. Bwa-ha-ha.).
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Don't be afraid to make your own rulings, it comes easier with time. Players would rather you made one up, that seems reasonable, and kept the game moving, than stop the flow to check out the books. You can discuss the real rule between sessions.
A tip to avoid having to page through the books as often (apart from get a GM screen): player wants to do a task, say climb a wall, and wants to know the DC. You haven't decided what this wall is like, because either you don't expect them to have come this way, or you expected them to just use the open door. Don't describe the task (it's a well-built, mossy wall...), then look up the official DC. Set the target DC value first, then describe it to the player in his own terms ('It looks a moderate climb for one such as you') The player will then fill in the description inside his own head, and he can't say he was misled to do something he wouldn't have done.
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Just ask yourself: am I having fun? and are my players having fun? if the answer is yes to both questions, then you are doing an excellent job as a DM.
This game is often learned by playing it. Dont worry about knowing all the answers. you can looke them up if you want to, or make a note of what questions you have, make a ruling. Just explain that everyone is learning, and you can look things up between games.
I think you have come up with lots of creative ideas and it seems like your players are having fun.
good luck
After we had this day of roleplay and things were starting to slow down, I said that the sun was going down, which prompted most of the characters to go home, with two exceptions.
Mr. Crane had been busy at Doc Brown's house for hours discussing business with him about producing more robots like Archimedes (Huck met Archimedes for the first time on Mr. Crane's porch and when asked where the robot came from, Mr. Crane successfully lied about being the builder. Huck decided that he must have his very own robot like it. After finding out the truth from Ichigo, Mr. Crane felt this was a good business opportunity and told Huck he would get back to him with an estimated price and time frame.) So, every time I cut to what Mr. Crane was doing, he brought up several more variables, which Doc Brown did some very complex math over. I kept throwing arbitrary numbers in years and thousands of gold at him as he kept trying to think of more variables to make it more cost efficient and faster to mass produce. This is actually convenient for me that they're taking this kind of interest in him because I had already wanted to include a side-quest where the players help Doc Brown expand his business to another town later (I work in retail and wanted an excuse to roleplay out some of the awful customers I've had, which I hope my players will get a kick out of) It also gave me a few story ideas for later that I won't mention yet as a couple of my players read these forums.
The other person who didn't go to bed right away is Huck. He was part of the crowd around Felix earlier that day when he was showing off his newest magical artifact find, the harp that summons Chyuu (she had just arrived so I immediately cut to her entrance so she could play too) In addition to deciding he wanted a robot after seeing Archimedes, he also decided that he must have this harp. After everybody went home, Huck broke into Felix's house, but he and Chyuu were not asleep yet. Huck climbed on the roof and Chyuu followed him, but decided it wasn't worth pursuing him further after he jumped over to the next roof.
Next up: I tried to move the story along and completely botched it, but my players forgave me.
Alright, here is where things started to go downhill. Thankfully, my players went easy on me.
At this point, everybody besides Mr. Crane was at home, either in bed or getting ready for bed. Then they began to hear the sounds of combat outside. Ichigo and Huck tied for the highest perception roll, so I placed the first two enemies in a place where both of them could see the them if they stepped outside their houses. They were the elf-like creatures I mentioned above and had an unnamed villager cornered with their short swords. Ichigo's player (our usual DM) kept going through misinterpretations of the situation on purpose to guide me into giving some more appropriate details. In order to make it not look like a mugging I ended up adding that they could hear more sounds of chaos throughout the town and that a nearby building was on fire. At that, Ichigo decided to help out the villager.
I originally intended to set up 3 small combats on the map individually for them to fight one at a time, but my players pushed me to let them know where else these invaders were causing trouble so I went ahead and placed all 3 battles on the map. They were able to down all 3 groups at once by just attacking whichever ones were closest to the building they happened to be in because I made them level 1 warriors with unoptimized stats, no feat or racial modifiers, and a one handed weapon (since I was throwing so many enemies at them at once I built them a little over cautiously and underestimated my players ability to fight intelligently and destroy) The only character who ended up significantly wounded was Chyuu, so after her original enemy was down she decided to go help put out the fire while the rest of the group finished up the combat. I could have easily killed her character because she ran by herself into a group of two. When she decided to fight them, I decided they were both attempting to beat a door down and only had one of them turn to fight her while the other one continued with the door.
In the end, Ichigo and Huck finished the original encounter of 2 by themselves. Huck went to assist Chyuu with her 2 and they defeated one each. Mr. Crane and Archimedes were the first to take on a group of 3, but were shortly joined by Ichigo and then Huck while Chyuu started putting out fires. After the battle there was an earthquake (Mr. Crane immediately dropped to the ground). Then, the town elder came running out of his home in typical "the sky is falling" fashion and said that the earthquake could only be connected to a breach in the shrine of the wind and that the attack must have been a distraction. My players were kind to me even though my story made little sense and decided to go investigate.
This is when it started to become blatantly obvious that loosely outlining the events I had planned, but failing to come up with a means for them to happen that made sense beforehand just wasn't going to work for me. The hook was poorly executed and the story only gets worse from here as my players investigate the wind shrine.