Dungeon, Dungeons, and more Dungeons

If you could give one tip to a new GM what would it be?

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Have fun

People bicker sometimes. Remember that these aren't real arguements, nor are they jokes either; They are fun to amuse for some times, but don't allow them to eat the time for everyone else. Just as well, when people bicker under stress, try to keep their attention; sometimes this sort of bickering will just end in arguments and make the situation worse. Just don't stress out if you loose the reigns for a little bit by players being goofy or being frustrated.

Err in the players' favor whenever possible. If player agency blows holes in your plot then your plot is too rigid. No one is having fun if you're shooting down ideas, let them run with it whenever possible.

Don't ride the Dungeons and Dragons ride. Getting a magic weapon isn't worth having to deal with Dungeon Master and Venger.

WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN

Build the adventure, not the world.

You wouldn't believe how many new GMs I see fall into the trap of building an entire WORLD with dozens of countries and countries and even lore for alternate planes... and yet the best adventures take place within a single country, or dungeon, or city. The end result is that the GMs end up with a huge lore dump that they end up dropping on players at the start and it's so overwhelming that most of them won't read it or care anyway, especially if their adventure isn't taking place in 98% of the places described.

Like, it's OK if that stuff exists in the GM's head, but the focus should always be where the adventure is taking place. There's a reason Elder Scroll games only tackle one region at a time, for example, even while all the others exist.

I mostly build worlds for my campaigns because I can't be bothered to memorize any of the already existent worlds and I like my players to have enough information to write a coherent backstory even if the plot never brings them back to their homeland.

This this this this.

And this.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Plans are useless, but planning is indespensible."

What this means, is that when you plan out adventures and campaigns, they won't ever go according to your plans. (The players will always go against your plans.)

Instead, you plan adventures and campaigns so that you, the DM, understand what your game is all about. That way, when your players inevitably kick your plans in, you will know what you have planned well enough to flex to the player's choices with ease.

you're talking about Morrowind vs. Oblivion

and Morrowind was late in development by 2 years. oblivion is trying too hard to fill a continent. the morrowind staff spent fuck-tons of time on each little area to make it special and memorable.

it's why new sandbox games are such garbage. do it event by event, or small location by small location. just like how it says in the 5e dmg, under creating adventures and encounters.

If the plot is never going to go back to their "homeland", it's best to just leave it sorta vague, or let the players themselves come up with what the place was like, rather than making something explicit and detailed and then requiring your players to study up on it just to make a character who isn't ruining your pre-established lore.

Don't plan extensively, PREPARE extensively.

Talk to your players in advance to get on the same page. Walk through rules, characters, tone, direction, etc, if you must. Cook up things like NPC names/races/classes/towns/personalities/descriptors with no immediate use, explicitly BECAUSE player agency will blow medicine-ball sized holes in a rigid plot like said. Preparing a lot is to be ready to improvise, relax, and have a good time.

Take care of the little things, and the big things take care of themselves.

It's a common lie among the normies that TTRPG players have turned away from the world so they don't have to develop social skills. Nothing is farther from the truth.

In order to be a good GM, you have to have social skills. You have to want to have players over, and want them to have a good time. You have to be empathetic and watch their reactions for clues on how they'll act -- so that you can prepare your adventures accordingly. You have to be a fucking social butterfly in tune with what your players are interested in, so that you can build encounters, adventures and worlds with them in mind. You also have to be able to read the interactions between players and make sure the party is running smoothly, and keep bickering (or worse, silence) to a minimum.

If you can't read people and if you don't seem like you want them around, then your games will fail and you will fail. I could give advice on how to prepare adventures, or how to roleplay NPCs, but the fundamental truth of the matter is, TTRPGs are a social game, and I've seen too many campaigns go up in flames because the GM was a sperglord who couldn't empathize with others.

If standing in a room talking to people intimidates you, being a GM isn't for you.

youtu.be/lttrIPDFplU

Sure, you need all those things to be a GM.

Being a player though... THAT is where you get the horror stories.

Ban Variant humans?

Don't introduce people to roleplaying with Shadowrun or Pathfinder unless you're sure they have the mental fortitude to deal with the massive task of making a character alone?

I have three.

One: If you are taking over from another DM due to burnout and decide "new DM, new campaign", suggest to your players what skills they might consider investing in. Likewise, if you set up the campaign in a way that requires things like military rank, say so to your players

(My story. Joined a group where two of the players pretty much dominated the game due to how generous/"sure, why not" the previous DM had been. (How bad? I was told to make a 12th level character. One player was only nominally level 12 and seemed to be on the path of becoming a Sorcerer-King.) New DM decided to start a new campaign and used the Skulls and Shackles books. No-one took Profession (Sailor) and the DM didn't suggest that it would be a good idea if someone took Profession (sailor). Somehow, my character becomes the pilot of the ship. The GM came up with naval battle rules and most sessions after the point where I became the pilot were consumed by one naval battle.)

Two: If a new person joins the group and is an absolute newb, suggest that they sit next to one of the guys who has their own copy of the PHB or equivalent. This guy will most likely be able to explain how the game works, leaving you to only chime in if you've made a rules optimization.

(I'm usually the guy who helps newbs. That's because when I was a newb, no-one helped me out. I help others out so that there are more players)

Three: The GM may run the enemies, but he should not BE the enemy. Act accordingly.

(I get the feeling that the above story about the new DM was sparked by the guys hatred of the sorcerer-king-aspirant player. In his defense, the player did deserve it. His character was a Kender who at level 1, had magical lockpicks and claimed to be Tasslehoff Burrfoot's son.)

This is very important advice.

Still I want to add that there is a reason for why social skills have the word "skill" at the end of it. That reason, is because like all skills, you have to practice them to improve them.

The question then, is how dedicated are you to getting better at speaking to people?

If you're nervous about doing public speaking of any sort, then know this:

The audience wants to like you.

A good place to practice public speaking would be to see if there is a Toastmasters near where you are, and participate with them. Even a few meetings can give you all kinds of insights in public speaking.

ASK YOUR PLAYERS WHAT THEY WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU COME UP WITH A CAMPAIGN.

I learned very early on that a campaign about Dungeon crawling wont appeal to players who want political intrigue, and a campaign about become a city's new top Thieve's Guild won't appeal to players who want to explore the wilderness or have a Monster Hunter game.

Always ask your players what they want the campaign to be about, and make sure they're all OK with whatever ends up being decided.

Adding to this, try to have your players communicate when coming up with character ideas, rather than doing it independently. Make sure everyone in the group has a reason to be there. "You all meet in an inn" intros are boring as hell and very quickly lead to characters who really have no strong reason to be with the party if things take a turn they don't like. Better bonds and characters who are loyal to eachother (or at least dependent on eachother in some way) lead to MUCH better games.

>You have to be a fucking social butterfly
>If you can't read people [...], then your games will fail and you will fail

>DMing next week for first time
>I'm literally an aspie
>mfw I read this

Being social is a skill Aspbro. If care more about getting good at DMing than you are averse to social situations, you'll get there eventually.

I'm an aspiebro too - you can learn to fake it really well.

Read the DMG. I'm not joking, and neither were they when they named it the "Guide"

I make this mistake all the time. I build a great world with rulers, backstories, details on how each region is governed, tensions between local regions... only to break my head over where in the hell the party fits into this. I can't really make them generals or something because that would mean using an entirely different system, D&D just isn't suited for that kind of thing.

When I run into the problem, I usually make a nation specifically geared towards the campaign. Said nation will be a newer, smaller one, one who's army is stretched too thin to handle everything on their own, or a nation with a leader who specifically believes that making allies of talented individuals (like the party) is the key to the nation's success. Keep in mind this tends to lead to higher-power campaigns though, where the players definitely ARE special people working directly under a ruler or leader and not regular soldiers in an army. This may not always work if you're going for a more gritty or realistic tone/setting.

if you want to go the realism route regarding rules , remember that realism is not always = fun.
except when the players explicitly say so.
when designing something, you can make it as fantastical as you want as long as you can accept the resulting consequences. if you go by the what if-rule and make the environment react in a realistic way, things will seem far more lively.
dont create things like races by visual design alone, the shape of living beings does correlate with their behavior and environment. dont create them based on tropes either, things like elves suffer greatly from being often based on certain tropes without caring about why they are like this.

the most important thing is to be prepared rather than to plan stuff. my current players might seem to be too afraid to step off the current quest path, but planning out how stuff should go about will only piss off players.

prepare some main settlements/cities and a simple geographical map. use random name generators to assist you if your players really need to know that merchant's name.
simply prepare an environment with places and peoples rather than a storyline. some player groups may want to explore a lot rather than to stay in a single region, preparing a few loosely defined villages and places should be enough. if they want to take a closer look, just make a few short descriptions in advance to slap onto the next place they visit.

if they start asking stupid shit like the shape of the roof tiles or the exact facial features of the guy they talk too, feel free to make up boring or stupid stuff.

Great advice.

The entire world of GreyHawk started out merely as the dungeon Castle GreyHawk and a nearby village to and organically expanded from that , a lot of details coming from actual play ingame. Forgotten Realms was similiar being fleshed out from the city of WaterDeep and the first campaigns around that and being expanded over time.

The truth is I think it's a lot harder to design one small thing in detail, especially within game design, than it is to create the broad and wide strokes of an entire world. I've had DM friends happily create entire continents and cities with broad strokes but give up when it comes to designing a single dungeon for a one shot , likely as they have to imagine the scary situation of people playing in, and judging , the thing they've created which is harder to do to 10 pages of fluff.

Keep in mind Social skills are a skill, if you put the effort in, you can get better at it. And again remember, everyone at the table wants to have a good time, if you put in the effort to make it fun, everyone else will put in the effort to enjoy themselves.

Basically, don't forget the last two lines of image. They're important.

Remember to ask what the players want. I've been in groups that have gotten mad when random dice rolls lead to characters dying, and I've been in groups that have gotten mad when the DM pulls his punches and cushions random crits that should turn characters into paste.

Both of these viewpoints are fine, but you need to be upfront and clear with your players about how everyone wants to play.

Give everyone in the party a chance to be useful, and craft the campaign in such a way that everyone has their moments to shine. Not everyone is going to be equally gifted in combat, and the campaign shouldn't be purely about who's best in combat (despite me running into alot of GMs who do this). If you have a rogue in the party, be sure to throw in some locked doors or traps where you normally wouldn't. If you've got a cleric, throw some undead or blights or other unholy things that only their holy power can ward off. If you've got a Ranger, be sure to put the party in a situation where their favored terrain and survival skills come into play.

I do find it ironic that so many nerds who struggle with social skills are attracted to a game that at its core requires them to succeed which is entirely forgotten by said player.

Hence why there's a million posts about problem players and problem GM's where the auto-reply is 'Try talking to them?' which is often met with a feeling of abject horror at having to resolve interpersonal conflict without relying on rolling any dice.

My suggestion to make a setting gel with DnD is to break it in half.
Anything from an empire collapsing all the way to a super-black-death, do something that creates instability and allows the dark to slowly overtake the world of men.

All the lore you've written could make cool history for the players to explore, and the areas once inhabited by great civilisations are prime adventure locations

...

What the others said.
Also, failure is often the first step towards success.
Failing is fine.
Failing is learning.
Failing is FUN.

Ask a dorf.

well, you can't go wrong with dungeons though

>"This dungeon is nice, DM, but we want some intrigue or something..."
>"Say no more! You round the bend and a magnificent view opens before your eyes! In a massive cavern below you see Menzoberranzan!.."
then you have this or that drow noble hire them to do some dirty work and give them enchanted masks that allow them to look like drow. voila! can't go wrong with dungeons.

Best advice I can give is to avoid D&D and its look-alikes like the plague. Whatever you think you want, there is a better game than D&D to run it with.

Find out what you are interested in running, find the best system to run it, and find players who are enthusiastic about playing it.

What you really must avoid is compromising on those points - it will lead to an unfun experience for all, and you'll walk away feeling that your session are a chore rather than a game.

Being a good person is the key to being a good GM.

You people ruin tabletop games far more than any systems. The DnD hate is tiresome now, most of the people who hate it have never even played it, you just hate it because it's popular. In b4 you start screaming like you have. Hipsters.

>You people ruin tabletop games far more than any systems.

How?

I mean, worst case is they just don't play D&D. How's that ruining tabletop games?

Because instead of ever contributing anything helpful ever, they just come into topics to whine about "YOU'RE HAVING BADWRONG FUN! MY PREFERENCES ARE SUPERIOR!" They're worse than console war fanboys and drag down the quality of a community that doesn't want them around to begin with.

One thing I've found personally is that despite the name, dungeon environments don't really compliment your dnd-style d20 games. They're cramped and leave little room for imagination. I'll certainly grant there's nothing easier to run, but the idea that there's just tons of paranoid delusionals running around building trap-filled labyrinths takes away what little immersion you may have and feels very quickly bland. Try to find a way to incorporate many environments that will make your world feel living and breathing. Sure you'll pretty much have to design each board/scenario beforehand anyway, but it lets players feel like they have more agency and more capability for tactics; similarly, your more intelligent enemies have the same options. Dungeons are fine for housing your actual psychopaths, but for general questery at least pretend you aren't in a dank, smelly basement for a while.

Like others have said, communicate with your players every step of the way.
>Before the campaign, ask them what kind of tone, genre, and adventure they're looking for
>During the campaign, ask them for feedback on the adventure and your performance.
>After the campaign, sit down with them and do a post-mortem on what worked and what didn't

As a GM you need to be able to view yourself with an objective critical eye, and comfortable enough to accept constructive criticism without getting offended. The difference between a good GM and a great GM is that the great ones have spent years honing their skills and approach, and can tailor their games to the desires of their players.

If I had to give a second piece of advice, it's to not get discouraged or anxious about starting GMing. Everyone sucks when they first GM a game. My first campaign was a horrible trainwreck, but I didn't let it get to me. I learned from my mistakes and made sure my next game was less horrible. It honestly took me about a decade to 'get good' but the satisfaction of hearing a friend recount an amazing story from a game you ran, laughing about it and gushing to someone about how epic it was... that makes it all worth it.

if you find yourself planning your adventures like "and then the party will definitely agree to take this guy's quest, and then they'll definitely agree to hire this guide who will definitely succeed at tricking them so they end up in this dungeon, where they will definitely... " no. you and your friends are going to have a bad time.

planning the setting along the lines of "important people in the city are Lord X, who is plotting to poison the king, and Lady Y, who is planning to corner the market on expensive spices and is sleeping with both Lord X and the king, and Bishop Z, who just found out that the precious relics of Saint Q have gone missing a week before the nationwide festival where he has to show them to everybody, and Catburglar K who is trying to drive up the prices on the relics she stole by playing pirate captains A and B against each other. now, the PCs just did Stupid Things C, D, and E. how is everybody in the city going to react?"

try to keep your players' backstories and goals in mind while designing the setting as well and the game is pretty much going to play itself.

Be kind, don't yell, wear deodorant and have breath mints (I'm not saying you're a fucktroll, but sitting in one room with 5 other people for hours is bound to make shit stink). Be quiet(ish) and respectful of your neighbors, they might not like hearing Krug's gutteral roaring or enthusiastic "SMITE EVIL"s.

Plan your breaks (1 break per 2 hours), plan your meals (and decide how and much it's gonna cost everyone), and allow about 30min of socialization if the players are already friends before the game. Try to eyeball how long the game's gonna last and say so; eg. we're gonna play from 1400 till 1800; this will let players with fucked up schedules plan around your game for that day.

Don't allow phones, laptops or whatever on the table. Don't let them get distracted, be interesting and fast. Whenever you're confused or forgot a rule, make a ruling "This is how this is gonna work in this particular case". If you fucked up, apologize and refund what the party lost because of your ruling.

Never be bullied, never yield to bullshit, but never be vengeful or petty. If your players ask for something, make them earn it in blood and gold. If they have a cool idea, bend reality a bit to make it work (within reason). If you're angry at someone at your table, talk to them, don't make a super-mage-killer that targets them.

Be careful (You do, after all, have a universe inside you, and the universe is fragile) but have fun, first and foremost. If it isn't fun for you, it won't be fun for anyone else at the table.

Always talk through the problem you have with anyone, players are usually normal human beings that will work with you. Saying "Guys, I didn't plan this route/dungeon out for today, could we turn back and I'll finish it for our next session" is a real, ok thing (at least in my book). Talk to your players, get feedback, and respect them.

I'd interject with, your players will not give true feedback, but subjective one.

If the game was fun and fast, they had fun and liked it, but wouldn't notice holes in the plot or something else. Don't go overboard on asking how they like the game. It's kinda like asking "how do you like this" during sex. Might be okay for the first 10-20 times, but it's offputting later in the relationship. Ask for the first few sessions, and eyeball it after.

If you're blessed with a fellow GM as your player, he could give better feedback.

>my first game was like mount and blade, but instead of leading an army, you're the herald of an undead apocalypse, was shitty but very fun for the 13year olds I ran it for (I was 16).

telling someone they need to run D&D is bad. telling people it's the best system to start out beginner in is bad. telling someone that it's impossible to have fun playing D&D is also bad.

telling us that people who don't like D&D can only possibly not like it because it is popular is pants on head stupidfuck. i've played a shitton of different systems and i've seen the difference when noobies start out in system X and system Y. D&D is very good at some things and not very good at other things. that's okay.

it's like you're telling me that the only reason i want to borrow jumper cables to start my car instead of a screwdriver like you is because i'm a hipster and i'm making up reasons to hate screwdrivers.

>You people ruin tabletop games far more than any systems.

i literally can't figure out what you're talking about. imagine the scenario:

"sorry i've been a terrible GM all night, everyone. someone wrote a negative post about D&D on an image forum and it just completely ruined my game, so now i'm forced to act like an asshole."

you've gone from "9/11 was an inside job" crazy to "i wear a tinfoil hat to protect myself from mind-control rays so i can see the lizardmen" crazy. stop it.

>tl;dr

Get over yourself.

It's not "bad" to recommend D&D, no matter how butthurt you are about it.

I have some adventures planned out and a overarching story planned for my game.

I have told the players they can do whatever they want but they just follow the plot I have given them, am I railroading them?

I am also afraid of them thinking I am railroading them. Even thought I want them to do what they want to do.

Sorry about my anxieties. Any tips or should I just continue with what I am doing?

The key to choices are information. Players can only choose between things they know about. If they only get information about the next step of the plot they are likely to proceed in that direction even if they are technically free to do anything. For more sandbox style play the players must be aware of multiple attractive options for how to proceed.

I give them all the info they want. I even had a encounter with a ambushed wagon because a player wanted to get in some combat and they all said "well we just escort the farmer to the nearest town instead of going to the cave to kill goblins and orcs".

you'll be shit and hate yourself, but your players will probably have fun

Thanks

...

>Kender

Not even once

You're gonna fuck up. Somewhere down the line you'll make a mistake. You'll let a player have a magic item that's too powerful or someone will pass a munchkin build right under your nose. Don't sweat it too much. Remember, it's just a game, and despite what the Veeky Forums community would have you believe, we're all friends here.

Wisdom

Does anyone have that screencap?

In the screencap, the OP asked if 3.5/Pathfinder/4E was fun (I can't remember which), and the response went something like:

"Think of the game as a roadtrip. On this roadtrip, the one driving the car is the GM, and all of the people in the backseat and the one driving shotgun are the players. The car itself is the game system you use to see all of the sights on this roadtrip. All of the sights and places the DM and the Players are seeing and visiting by means of their car is the campaign."

"Roadtrips are all about having good times with your friends while seeing new sights and experiencing new locales. The car you drive on the way is the means of you getting to those places."

"So the question of 'Is X System fun?' Isn't the question...."

I can't remember, but I recall him talking about how the Pathfinder car may have a leaking transmission and a busted AC or something.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

run a premade module it makes the buy in for the players a lot lower and they probably won't fly off the rails

you gotta learn to be a gm first before you can handle that in a coherent way

I do believe this is what you're looking for.

That's fucking retarded.

That's the one! Thanks!

Isn't there a version of this that has the lyrics to 8-Mile instead of the original text?

>If you could give one tip to a new GM what would it be?
Do not play D&D.

It rhymes.

I won't be back to post in a bit, but why do you think that it's fucking retarded?

I will now unveil the secret formula that will turn even the staunchest of fun haters into addicts waiting for your next plot hook or NPC:

Feed singular lines of random world-building factoids in relevant spots. Talking to a priest? Make up an interesting fact about the religion. Getting involved in a war? Throw out the result of the most recent battle. Grab a McGuffin? The first owner was so and so.

It makes all the difference between an adventure and a ~world~.

could you be anymore of a retarded faggot?

Yeah, I could be a DnD player.

wow did you get that line from your "500 most stupid and gay jokes for retarded faggot 12 year olds" book?

Maximum cringe, man.

the only cringe here is your stupid ass comments and your tiny girl penis.

...

Cestree must be a really sweet girl.
10/10, would allow to DM or become a player while I DM. 11/10 if she wears that cute sweater.

Of course it is. It promotes toxic player behavior, toxic expectations with regards to both gameplay and roleplaying, and is itself a broken, unfun piece of garbage.

People that primarily play D&D, and especially those that started out in D&D, are the worst kinds of players. If they enjoyed D&D, that means they're really interested in playing a wargame, not an RPG, and will inevitably try to exploit mechanics to make them the most powerful killer they can. If they didn't enjoy D&D, they've still picked up all its bad habits, from creating paper-thin characters with a description that boils down to RACE/CLASS/ALIGNMENT, to an extreme over-reliance on silly "standard fantasy" tropes in their understanding and interaction with the world, to perhaps the most damning of all traits, the utter inability to play in a session that doesn't involve combat, or conceive of character progression that doesn't revolve around becoming more proficient at killing.

D&D is the worst thing about this hobby, hands down. Setting it aside, the RPG community is a fairly nice place with a lot of quirky little neighborhoods, but D&D is the ghetto of that community and it's easily entrapped the plurality of its members.

It's like, you can grow up in the suburbs of really any major metropolitan area and while you're going to be a bit different than your peers, you're not going to really have a problem interacting with them. But people that started with D&D grew up in a crack den, and regardless of how good a person they might otherwise have been, it will be really tough to integrate them with the world outside of their insane little ghetto.

Wow.
Way to make crazy assumptions, user.

What's the weather going to be like a year from now?

>filename

>Are you kidding me?!

This is you right now.

None of this is true outside of personal experience. You're just mad because you have expectations about D&D players that are only partially, and infrequently true.

is this bait? i see this posted a lot and it's filled with some really bad advice

why are you so goddamn assmad is it because your stupid bunghole gets ravaged everyday by cocks that are three times the size of yours? i bet it is you dingus aringus fucking failure faggot. Go back to autism games.

This is also you.

Not the user, but I remember people pointed out the analogy falls apart. Just as a bad car can drag down a roadtrip even with good friends, a flawed system can drag down a campaign even with good players. All systems have their flaws though, ranging in quantity, severity, ease of fixing, and being aware of them existing. A system is easier to replace than a car but not as disastrous if it breaks the campaign compared to a roadtrip.

Going with the screencap, using a junk car to head to the beach with friends makes the car's flaws manageable since the drive is probably 30 minutes. Using it for a long roadtrip is when gas costs start adding up, the lack of AC dulls everyone, and you invite the chance of the car breaking down.

My dislike of DnD mainly stems from the class/level system and the incredibly limited mechanics in place for promoting RP. Oh, and the whole Alignment system but that's easily ignored anyhow.

And the way that weapon damage works and the fact that thanks to the way that HP works everything just becomes stupidly tough after a certain point.

I've only really played 5e. I've played one game of Pathfinder but the GM was a shit and it died shortly after.

Also I am not the other guy.

Real mature.

When you describe a location, note the sights, sounds, smells, tactile sensations, etc. that the party experiences. Don't say "it is a nice, rich mansion", say something about the color, styles, cleanliness, whatever. A decent length description for a new town or area is fine while short descriptions for places in that area works.

Imagine yourself there and describe what you are experiencing without saying how it makes you feel or using any shortcuts.

>telling someone they need to run D&D is bad. telling people it's the best system to start out beginner in is bad. telling someone that it's impossible to have fun playing D&D is also bad.
>telling us that people who don't like D&D can only possibly not like it because it is popular is pants on head stupidfuck. i've played a shitton of different systems and i've seen the difference when noobies start out in system X and system Y. D&D is very good at some things and not very good at other things. that's okay.

This is all true except -maybe- the first line depending on how you meant it.