How to DM

full disclosure, varg is the main reason why i wanted to start playing rpgs in the first place.

i would expect someone like varg to come up with a MUCH cooler setting than myfarog
myfarog blows

yeah, from what i understand the setting is just supposed to be a recreation of early europe. pretty boring considering that it's barely even fantasy. i would never buy it.

Although i did buy pic related on his recommendation, and that's actually the system that i was talking about playing when i made this thread.

does anyone have any experience with this?

good satanic digits

i don't know about that setting. but what kind of game do you want to run

>i don't know about that setting
i've heard it's supposed to be essentially a fanmade version of 3.5, and that there are very few differences. i've never played 3.5 though, so i have no way of knowing for sure.
>what kind of game do you want to run
i honestly don't even know what different kinds i have to choose from. i was hoping to make something more plot-driven than combat-driven, that has a creative and engaging story. aside from that, i really have no idea.

If you want something plot driven, the way I like to do it is with conspiracies. Sure, you get the combat encounters, but it's not about killing spies and cultists and assasins and payed off knights and guards, sure that helps, but if you don't unravel their plans then even if you kill some underlings then they still win. The entire game is a puzzle, with the players trying to put together all the pieces they get each session. Oh, and recurring npcs are great. Not like waifus, I mean enemies, and try to avoid faceless mooks if you can.

Improv improv improv!

Also go listen to the fear the boot podcast

Wouldnt recommend the second. Think more about what you would like as a player.
If you have problems with describing enemys or scenery make an pinterest account and search there for pictures.

Read the rules, you should know them best, as the DM
But also learn when to fuck what you read and make a ruling yourself, because in D&D, the DM is above the book, above the players, and above the creators of the game, as long as what the DM rules makes sense.
Be consistent with your houserules. If one player has disadvantage swimming in fur armor because it gets wet, that shouldn't change so that another player swimming in fur armor doesn't get disadvantage

You don't do stories, you do locations, events, opponents, allies, neutrals.

Allies, Neutrals and Opfor have their goals.
Knights want peace and order, animals want to eat, and Orcs want to pillage; play them as such.

Locations are towns, dungeons, forests, deserts. Have a basic map (or squibbles) of them, tag key NPCs (that sultry baker's daughter or that gruff old blacksmith or that kind innkeeper), and have players interact with them.

Events are things that creatures or nature does; a big earthquake might force all the orcs out of their caves; orcs, with lower numbers and no supplies, aggressively pillage surrounding villages that are also in a state of dismay. The Kingdom sends its Knights and puts out big bounties on Orcs. This lets your PCs enter as mercenaries, kill orcs for pay, try to join the knighthood, or whatever they think up.

Event: Their beloved location (town) is under attack and they get to protect it. Orcs (enemy) attack civilians (neutrals), and Knights come in to take the glory after an hour (allies).

The party needs to obtain the lost rod of evocation for the lonely hermit Wizard (ally) in return for teleportation services. The Tomb (location) is filled with Undead (enemy), but they come across graverobbers (neutral, ally or hostile depending on PC diplomacy, the robbers don't take kindly to sharing loot).

You didn't make a story; the players make the story. You supply everything else except the main protagonists to the story.

To compound on what this guy said, prep a little more than you need each week and/or use premade material to save time

You have a whole Monster manual, and currently this includes NPC stats that are usually close enough to what you need even if they're called something else. By all means prep a few interesting monsters and NPCs statistically, but the more important thing is where they are, what they're like, what they're up to.

Having a little more material than you need gives PCs options, and the stuff you don't use this week can be rolled into next week's list of options. Eventually you'll have a LOT more than you need, and the PCs will feel like there's a whole fleshed out world of options. But you don't need to overwhelm yourself making a whole damn world for session one.

Also focus a little on "generic" material. For example, basilicas have similar floorplans wherever you find them and it's pretty easy to tweak that for smaller/larger/ruined versions. A given faction's mooks might all have fairly similar stats, with a few small tweaks for squad leaders or elites or something. And again, these statblocks can be usable over and over and over. If the party sticks around the same base town, NPCs from one session appear again and again and your cast expands.

Finally, think in outline format when you can. When you want to make a big dungeon, it can be helpful to think of it in sections or levels and handle those one at a time afterwards. Or your cities' relationship maps might start with a broad strokes understanding of what guilds interact what way and you can "zoom in" on the relationships of individuals in that context.

Yeah, "GMing a story" rarely goes well because you won't have enough prepared to accomodate actual player choice - instead have an idea of where it'll be you'll GM, what's happening there, and what things would be there for that story to unfold, but don't expect it to in the way you think.

full disclosure, MYFAROG is a very badly designed system.

Here's the order in which to worry about things:

>1) Social dynamic
Roleplaying is a social hobby. It's 80% people and 20% game. You have to start with great people.

>2) Yes, and...
Players will want things. Try not to say no. Say yes and connect it to a challenge or complication.

>3) Genre
It's all about tropes. Genres tell people what to expect from a story. They can be combined and they can be broken, but if they're randomly thrown out it diminishes drama and tragedy, eventually leading to an irrelevant vision where everything is arbitrarily contrived. Keep flavors pure.

>4) Rules
The mechanics of the game give it structure and incentivize behavior. Make sure you are playing with the rules, not in spite of them. Don't change rules around. Instead find a game that is better suited to your expectations and has been balanced and playtested to that end.

A few tips:
Roll with the punches. Take anything the players do and connect it to your story. Don't herd them, lead them with a carrot.

Have goon stats and a list of setting names handy at all times. Use those to flesh out anything the players want that wasn't prepared, which can be everything.

Have players whose characters aren't in the scene play NPCs (without secrets). Make sure everyone gets spotlight regularly and challenge players to be outgoing even if that isn't their nature.

Ask your players how they liked it, what they didn't like, and where they want to take it next.

Write down things after the session. At least keep track of who was killed and who has sworn vengeance. The best way is to get a player to keep a character journal.

>my friends and i want to start playing D&D
Huge mistake

Please don't shitpost like this.

He's not to know the problems the system has. If you're going to do this, please either point out the many problems the system has, or at least suggest other systems to use. By preference, both is best.

>don't shitpost like this
>shitpost like this instead

See:

Thinking isn't your strong suit, is it?

I'm not in any way denying the system has problems. Just that HURDUR HUGE MISTAKE doesn't help a newbie at all.

I'm saying that you're just telling him to put more effort in his shitposting, and to disguise it by googling up a few complaints.

At least his post can be treated as a dumb joke, while what you're recommending is for everyone to waste their time treating his shitposting seriously.

No. I'm telling him to NOT shitpost, you thick fuck.

Just screeching ITS BAD is shitposting.

Offering reasons as to why its bad, or offering alternatives, or better yet, both? Is NOT shitposting.

There, is that broken down into small enough, bite sized chunks for you yet?

I think it's a mistake to try to design around one 'super cool' quest that you force your players into. Roleplaying games are about choice and to that effect sandbox games are king. Otherwise why not play a video game which can do linear a lot better?

So to that effect. Don't prep a story as you're not trying to tell a story to your players, thats what writing a novels for, you're writing a game.

So Prep multiple interesting situations.

First of all create a hex map. You can go on hexographer to do this, or draw one out on paper. Id keep it small, like 10x10 with each hex representing 6 miles across of land.

Your map needs a base town and 3 interesting terrain based locations. Say a forest, a mountain range and a swamp.

Your town is going to have 3 locations that your players will actually care about.

An Inn to get quests in, rest and buy general supplies like food. A blacksmith for them to buy weapons and armour. A magical shop for them to get their hands on potions and a very small amount of minor magical items.

You will create 3 npcs to staff each of these locations Each NPC will have a quest that links to one of the 3 locations. For example, save the innkeepeers daughter from forest orcs, slay a swamp monster and harvest it for the wizard and recover a mithril item from a dearvwn tomb in the mountain for the blacksmith.

Each of those locations is going to include a small dungeon you design. You can use the '5 room dungeon' design template. You can steal these as well. Each quest points to these.

Finally youre going to create 3 random encounter tables ( or steal them) that links to each area.

You can check each day of travel and once per long rest a 15% chance (18-20 on a d20)

Forest.
D6 roll
1. 2d6 wolves
2. 1d8 Orcs
3. 1d4 Giant Bats
4. 2D6 Goblins
5. Brown Bear.
6. Green Dragon Wyrmling

These don't neccesarily have to be hostile and I'd avoid ambushing the players just let them choose how they want to tackle the encounter.

Then thats it enjoy.

Screeching "IT'S BAD" is shitposting.
Typing long, drawn out, and ultimately pointless and one-sided criticisms of popular systems is shitposting as well, it just requires more effort on the shitposter's part.

Not comprehending this? How about a hypothetical example.

Game A uses a wound system. Person hates Game A, and decides he needs to shitpost. So, rather than weighing the good and bad aspects of the wound system, they focus entirely on the bad aspects, condemn any systems that use wound systems, and then prattle about how Game A is awful because wound systems are terrible. All discussion just ends up with him repeating how much he hates Game A and how terrible wound systems are, and ultimately everyone is dumber as a result, including the other people who dislike Game A because now they're just going to repeat forever how much wound systems suck without really understanding them.

In short, shitposting is shitposting, regardless of how much effort you try to disguise it with.

Ok, head totally up your ass, got it. Thanks for telling me I can ignore you.

>my brand of shitposting has been called out!
>better jump the gun and perform damage control

People aren't stupid. Being vociferous with shitposting is still just shitposting.

Run a module, OP.

If you start out with your own adventure in your own campaign, you're gonna fuck up the thing you really wanna do before you have a chance to do it well.

Pick a module for your system-of-choice, and run it. Something in your edition's sweet-spot. Levels 3-7, for D&D 2e, but I don't know where the spot is for 3+. It gives you and your players a chance to fuck around a bit, before sitting down to a real game. Everyone, you included, gets some training wheels. Then everyone will actually be interested in the thing you wrote, and no one will feel like they're co-writing fan-fic, because it'll already feel like a professionally-published game.

>tfw your shitpost started a shitposting cascade

...

>The moment some troll posts about other posters instead of the thread topic, the thread goes to shit
When will you learn, Veeky Forums?

Lad, if you and your players are all new I would recommend that you use a pre-made adventure, like pic-related which comes in the starting set of 5e (which incidentally is very accessible for newbies). The reasoning behind this is that making a DnD adventure that's good is difficult, especially if you're going in blind.
Lost Mines of Phandelver is pretty solid, and it contains a bit of helpful advice for new DMs (I think).

Also, again cause you guys are all new, I would also recommend you use pre-generated characters.
This is because character-generation is quite involved in most editions of DnD, at least for newbies. If you go down this route you will probably have to walk the players through it and it'll eat up a large chunk of time, which can bore your players and put them off the game entirely.

Handily enough, the DnD 5e starter box comes with 5 pre-made characters. The names are blank so the players can even personalise them a bit.

Run Lost Mines for a few session with the pre-gens (the starter set comes with a basic set of rules, so you don't even need the PHB), then if you want you can sit down and start trying to make an adventure yourself.
Hopefully by this point the players will have a good enough grasp on the rules that they can make a character without too much hand-holding

Though that's just like, my opinion man

op here. thanks for all the help guys. i'm going to compile all of the tips that have been given here into a document for easier access.

for those of you who are saying d&d is bad, i'm not actually playing the legit version of d&d. it's this which is essentially a fan-made version of the game, but it's supposed to be good, and it only cost five bucks.

That's worse, actually: You're not conforming to a hype, and still you play the worst mechanics for nubs.

For Fantasy try Runequest, Reign, or a Luke Crane game.

I mean after you realize what you have done by choosing D20.

Watch Critical Role
Mercer is a true master of the art