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I am a new GM, but as a kid I loved the Basic D&D Set and would read it from cover to cover, over and over, but never found a group of like-minded people to play with. :(
Here I am now, many years later, and I have 10(!) people who are interested in trying this out. I know what you're thinking... too big of a challenge for a new GM, right?
Yes, it is. But I honestly don't like the idea of splitting the group, and I think because this is a tight-knit group of people that it will add to the fun. Also, the combat rules remind me very much of law school exams, so I'm already getting the combat rules memorized to a tee and applying them in practice battles and scenarios from the 1st module that I'm gonna run, Crypt of the Everflame, before I actually run it this week. (Btw we've already made their characters - also, I'm basically not going to overwhelm them with the rules and I'll just introduce concepts gradually.) I want to run them through the Price of Immortality trilogy first, both so they can get the hang of this, and for myself to get better at this as well, before I try an entire Adventure Path.
I'm posting in THIS thread because I was reading through "Burnt Offerings" last night and I'm loving it. But I was wondering how the hell I can spike up the challenge of it if I still have an overly-large group when I get around to it?
Then I thought maybe have them unarmed during the first battle. It's a day of celebration - why would they be carrying their greataxes around with them? And why would the wizard and cleric bother to have their spells prepared? They're not adventuring!
I thought it would be a good idea for the following reasons:
1. Plausibility.
2. Make the fight more memorable. They're also gonna have to get in tussles with some goblins to take their dogslicers from them.
3. This gives them an incentive to shop around and explore Sandpoint at the beginning. They will not have spent their initial outlay of gp yet, and have a clear incentive to explore the shops and meet some of the townies for the first few days.
4. I have a monk character in the party, and it will give her a chance to shine from the get-go.
By the way, I've already some threads here about increasing the number and variety of monsters with a large party, instead of hitting them with overpowered single monsters. I get the general idea of what to try and what to avoid. I just thought I'd share this idea with other people and get some useful advice.
I'm very excited to start this whole RPG thing and hope to find support and advice in this community. Hope to hear from summa yuz! :)
You make some pretty valid points, trying to spice up the game for your new players. But on the flip side, let me offer you the other hand:
Plausibility: The characters are adventurers. They are wanderers, warriors and spellcasters by trade. Casters gain their spells back after a night of sleep anyway (and after only a token amount of time of prayer / spellbook perusing), and a Fighter, Barbarian or Ranger is going to carry their sword, greataxe or bow with them as their standard dress.
Making the fight more memorable: Try doing this without denying your players their fun toys right from the get-go. Instead of taking away their items, try adding more goblins to up the challenge. Burn the encounter into their memories with improvised dialog. Really ham up a goblin accent as it attacks the wizard frantically with a Dogslicer, and describe the gruesome details as the Barbarian squashes one with a critical hit.
Incentive: The story itself should offer natural incentive in the form of XP, story and item rewards. In order to solve the mystery of Sandpoint, the players will need to explore the town and speak to the townsfolk. That'll be covered in due time, so just have patience and let the players work at their own pace.
The monk: Everybody wants a chance to shine, and everybody WILL get their chance. But it would probably be best not to deplete the resources of every other character while the one character that doesn't rely on those resources is untouched. Later on in the game that's a good plot twist, but right from the get-go, it may make the players feel cheapened or cheated out of their rightful stuff.
Keep in mind that attacking unarmed provokes Attacks of Opportunity. And if your Fighter or Barbarian--or worse, your Wizard--with no weapon and no armor is left to fight a bunch of goblins, the party is going to take heavy damage and possibly some losses right at the start.
I hope I've been some help, and I hope your new GM experience goes over well! Keep in mind that you WILL make mistakes, your players WILL make mistakes, and all you need to do is laugh, move on and keep the dice rolling!
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Plausibility: The characters are adventurers. They are wanderers, warriors and spellcasters by trade. Casters gain their spells back after a night of sleep anyway (and after only a token amount of time of prayer / spellbook perusing), and a Fighter, Barbarian or Ranger is going to carry their sword, greataxe or bow with them as their standard dress.
That is true, and changes my concept of the characters a bit. Yeah, if they're Level 1, then they would have some experience under their belt already at this point. Thanks for that.
Incentive: The story itself should offer natural incentive in the form of XP, story and item rewards. In order to solve the mystery of Sandpoint, the players will need to explore the town and speak to the townsfolk. That'll be covered in due time, so just have patience and let the players work at their own pace.
This is the part I'll think most about. I'll have to see what they're inclinations are when I run the Immortality trilogy, especially with the relatively open-ended 2nd part. But yeah perhaps I don't need to think ahead too much about getting them to explore when there ARE a few days after the goblin attack for the characters to do what they want.
Keep in mind that attacking unarmed provokes Attacks of Opportunity. And if your Fighter or Barbarian--or worse, your Wizard--with no weapon and no armor is left to fight a bunch of goblins, the party is going to take heavy damage and possibly some losses right at the start.
I didn't think about the AoOs. But then again, the party is going to be very large (possibly up to 10), and if some can grab the dog slicers they won't be unarmed anymore.
Also, our first adventure will be Crypt of the Everflame, so going unarmed at the beginning of RotRL might be a way to "spice things up." But to be honest I'll take everything you said into consideration again later when I get closer to showtime with RotRL - I will have learned a lot more about how combat plays out and about the players by then.
Thanks for the assurance - I WILL make mistakes - and yes I'll try my best to have fun! Actually, preparing and obsessing about all these things is fun in itself lol. I'll keep you posted when I run this, which will probably be several weeks from now!
I'm glad I could be of some help! I hope your first experience as a DM is both memorable and enjoyable! Go get 'em, tiger, and let the dice fall as they may!
I'm currently running a group through this and there is a gonblin song MP3 on the boards that someone made to go along with the song in burnt offerings, its awesome and will really add some fun to this.
Play up the goblins as it says in the AP, they arent the brightest of foes, and the tribe your palyers will eb facing are the weakest ones.
Doglsicers are weapons some pcs wont be profiecient with, so check rules for improvised weapons. (think dogslicers might be short sword but not sure)
Also someone has doen conversions on the monsters to pathfidner, i'll try to find you the kinks to that and the song.
As for a large group, see how they do, and as they improve, scale the encounters accordingly. New players wont breeze though some encounters the way veterans do, but as they get into it they will start surprising you with rules you barely know.
Good Luck
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I would be concerned about running 10 people as an experienced DM and an inexperienced DM and 10 new (?) players is a recipe for disaster. Combats drag on forever when you have a lot of people and it's even worse with inexperienced people.
Even if you want to run everyone as a group due to their ties, I would suggest splitting them into two groups for a few months for everyone to learn the basics, before combining the groups.
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Not sure why this got moved to the Crypt of the Everflame thread... Apparently I can't re-edit my post and put a spoiler tag up top. :(
I'm currently running a group through this and there is a gonblin song MP3 on the boards that someone made to go along with the song in burnt offerings, its awesome and will really add some fun to this.
Play up the goblins as it says in the AP, they arent the brightest of foes, and the tribe your palyers will eb facing are the weakest ones.
Doglsicers are weapons some pcs wont be profiecient with, so check rules for improvised weapons. (think dogslicers might be short sword but not sure)
Also someone has doen conversions on the monsters to pathfidner, i'll try to find you the kinks to that and the song.
As for a large group, see how they do, and as they improve, scale the encounters accordingly. New players wont breeze though some encounters the way veterans do, but as they get into it they will start surprising you with rules you barely know.
Good Luck
Help with that MP3 would be great... thanks! In the meantime I found this link to Pathfinder conversions of Rise of the Adventure Paths: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/fan-conversions/paizo-adventure-paths
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I would be concerned about running 10 people as an experienced DM and an inexperienced DM and 10 new (?) players is a recipe for disaster. Combats drag on forever when you have a lot of people and it's even worse with inexperienced people.
Even if you want to run everyone as a group due to their ties, I would suggest splitting them into two groups for a few months for everyone to learn the basics, before combining the groups.
You are right - and I think the problem is solving itself - because of scheduling difficulties, the group has turned into two groups of 4-5 players each.
Also, I realize that my first task is to sift out who the actual enthusiasts for tabletop RPGing are. After my first session last night with Crypt of the Everflame, it was clear that a couple people were more excited about the concept of imagining their characters and looking over the slew of options that were available, more so than they were of the actual roleplaying and "imagining they're there" of minute-by-minute play.
It made me think of how, with the popular computer game The Sims, there are people who love designing different houses, and others like to play out the characters and go through the business of running their lives.
And then there was one player who had decided to become a Rogue, who was completely excited by the game and thinking strategically at all points, who looked forward to finding situations where he could use his skills, who was pointing out the strengths in other players and assigning them tasks, who was pissed off that he had rolled a low Knowledge (local) score and wondered what the info he had missed about the dead bandit, etc.
So I'm using this process to find out, out of the 2 groups who I'll be running Crypt with, who are the real enthusiasts. Then I'll group them together and come out of all this with a core of 4-5...
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Maybe have them start as commoners or experts. They have to earn 1000 experience points to gain their first genuine level.
Shane
That's a cool idea. Though maybe I'd use it for a future campaign - I would think that scenario calls for genuine "finding their calling" stories, and do something meaningful that has something to do with self-discovery, like meeting their mentors, or have their setting be a school who then branch out into different specializations... something more than simply racking up XP
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So I'm using this process to find out, out of the 2 groups who I'll be running Crypt with, who are the real enthusiasts. Then I'll group them together and come out of all this with a core of 4-5...
It sounds like things are working out. Depending on people's response to the first adventure, you could run both a "Hardcore" group and a "Casual" group who is more interested in a social get together than the game itself.
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So I'm using this process to find out, out of the 2 groups who I'll be running Crypt with, who are the real enthusiasts. Then I'll group them together and come out of all this with a core of 4-5...It sounds like things are working out. Depending on people's response to the first adventure, you could run both a "Hardcore" group and a "Casual" group who is more interested in a social get together than the game itself.
That's a good way of thinking about it. There are some folks I feel a bit uncomfortable saying "No" to who I think I'll still try it out with, but who I think were saying yes mainly because the idea sounded novel and it was a chance to try something I was really excited about along with other friends of ours. Yeah, I think a more casual group and a more "hardcore" group makes sense.
I have a problem, though, in that one of the "hardcore" people insists on having it take place at his house, while another in the same group gets asthma attacks there because of his allergies. Oh well...
Silver Crescent Publishing
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I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of playing up the goblins. Giving dialogue and a soundtrack are great ways to make things memorable. You can also play to the goblin's strengths. An old adventure called Tallow's Deep comes to mind, where goblins are actually using tactics (imagine that!). If you play the goblins a bit smarter (since they do have average intelligence anyway) players tend to be caught a little off guard. They expect goblins to be a bunch of peons with low hit points, not clever and sinister foes.
Adding more goblins can also up the difficulty a little bit. Perhaps even adding in an additional lieutenant or something to give the heavy hitters something to aim at.
Just a few thoughts.
have the housebound guy with the place full of pollen, mold, cat hair, dust....whatever, clean the house the day before the game and have asthma dude or dudette bring their air purifier or buy one at sears....