How do you guys do it...

How do you guys do it? I'm supposed to be running a dnd campaign for my group of friends soon and for some reason I just can't figure out how I'm supposed to organize everything so I can run it smoothly. How should I go about writing shit down? All I have is a mess of paragraphs that I don't think I can use effectively. How should I go about building an adventure?

Use premade adventures and see how they do it.

5e has a baller collection of premade adventures, you can't go wrong with them.

If you are first time DM i highly agree with the other user. Premade adventures are your friends especially as a new dm. It helps you heaps in terms of running your firat campaign amd what to expect. Im a firat time DM and im running hoarde of the dragon queen atm and rise of tiamat directly after it, not the most dm friendly campaign but im having fun and my players are having fun. Ive heard out of the abyss is meant to be awesome, so maybe pick up that and go from there. But 5e has a bunch of premade adventures and all of them look pretty good in their own way

As someone who's running a game as a first timer myself, I gotta say a few things I was told when asking the same, plus shit I already learned with my players

Don't share any numerical values with your players

Make them all roll chars beforehand, and in private with you, so they'll have to introduce their chars, as well as think what they want to play, to avoid situations like
>oh player 1 already plays a ranger? Well I wanted to play one
>"what's stopping you, player 2?"
>mumbles something and rolls a different class anyway

Bosses do not have set hp, they die when you feel they should

Improvise and make shit up as soon as it falls off the flimsy rails you try to keep your players on, and well, it will fall off the rails, especially with first timers

Just use a pre-written adventure for your first few dm'ing sessions.
You'll learn a hell of a lot.
Once you get the hang of it you can use premade adventure with your own personal twist.

I've thrown additional bosses/plots/intrigues into existing modules with much success.

>doing any organising at all
>not just winging it start to finish

I'm doing this with a GURPS campaign right now and it's fun and is great for learning improv. The entire campaign is run on the Henderson Scale really.

>Bosses do not have set hp, they die when you feel they should
This is a bad habit to get into.
As a starting GM, you might not set the strength of a boss quite right, so adjusting the hp as you encounter an issue is absolutely fine.
However, going in without anything remotely set and depending on your own, personal, subjective, and fallible judgement to determine how and when the battle should stop is relying entirely too much on GM fiat.
GM fiat should be used sparingly, if at all.
Let the rng do their job to help inspire the narrative along with GM planning at PC action.

I ran a two games overall, neither to completion due to me axing them both, due to my carelessness.

This user gives extremely sound advice, some of which I regret not following. The character creation doesn't have to be private, however then you should beat into your players that they ignore videogame logic and assure them that a campaign can be played with any composition.

Exposing numbers will only spread salt, min/maxing and OOC. The players will see the boss, themselves, weapons, etc. as numbers instead ob being immersed into the enviroment.

Improvisation can carry games, but don't disregard proper planning. Always have some way to pull them back into the main story, if they stray too far. Like WAY too far.

Bosses, however should have HP as a standard indicator of its damage state. But it shouldn't dictate it's death.

I literally make up everything on the fly with almost zero preparation. NPCs, town quests, dungeon layouts, enemy AC/HP/abilities, lore, loot. I scribble in a small book and fake all of it. Campaign's going pretty well right now.

Aight, I might've worded my point about boss hp wrong, but that was due to not being a native english speaker, and hastily replying between classes, but you did manage to get what I wanted to say with that point.

Wing it

Have lots of maps, encounters, and basic NPC ideas on standby with a general idea of how to slot them in. Beyond that you're gonna fall to pieces in less than an hour when the players do something you didn't expect.

Improvization is the strongest tool a GM has. All the rest are to aid it ultimately.

Personally I write down loose descriptions of places and NPCs and fill the blanks in as I go. Unless I have a specific idea of what I want someone to be like I wing it on the spot and make notes.

For encounters I have a list of random ones premade to draw from ie. 2x Thugs 2x berserkers with HP AC and attacks on the page where they are (dungeon, town ECT.).

Alot of it is just practice and doing it, find a pace that works for you and just try and get better. Also note cards can help alot, getting different colored ones can make organizing easier.

Once you get the hang of DMing, a mess of paragraphs, a goal, a map, and whatever statblocks you need being a click away are all you need.

Just have in mind a general idea of what the place is like, be sure to write down/remember what happens during the game, and wing it. The most fun I've had with RPGs almost always comes from the GM throwing together an idea in someone else's basement and everyone else going along with it and having fun.

My biggest thing to remember is this- read your players, see how they enjoy your game and why, and do your best to make sure everyone's having a good time. If someone's making someone else uncomfortable drop the fucking hammer on them. If someone's not getting into it talk about them afterwards, see what you can do. Communicate with your players and everything else will just come naturally.

>My biggest thing to remember is this- read your players, see how they enjoy your game and why, and do your best to make sure everyone's having a good time. If someone's making someone else uncomfortable drop the fucking hammer on them. If someone's not getting into it talk about them afterwards, see what you can do. Communicate with your players and everything else will just come naturally.
This.

If you read That GM and many That Guy stories, a lack of awareness and control on the GM's part are often involved.
I'm hard pressed to say which is more important, being able to read the group, or being able to adjust to the group.

In short, organize by type: People, Places, Things. Sort by relevance (a random merchant isn't at the forefront like a PC's rival, for instance).

Long answer: Prepare everything as though it were an answer to a question. Players, often unintentionally, are inquisitive and will invariably find ways to catch you off-guard. Considering a world map, countries, regions, towns, names, or even saved pictures for NPCs will cover a lot of ground for you.

That's not to say you PLAN extensively. Just having something, ANYthing to pull from the grab-bag if a player asks goes a long way to keeping things smooth.

If you're worried combat will be shaky, use a battlemat. If you're worried it'll get dull, there's lots of good sources in books/film/tg that can help you design memorable, varied encounters.

Get on the same page with your players beforehand. You will be more confident in how the game is going when you have some idea of what does/doesn't appeal to them. Character creation, I think, ought to have a combination of public and private elements, to supply plausible setups for the party as well as narrative 'juice' for future sessions and RP. I like to ask players questionnaires about their character, as well as what they like best between Combat, Social, and Exploration pillars.

Ultimately, think like a player. Prepare yourself for the kinds of questions YOU would ask, and do your best to run a game YOU would enjoy. That enthusiasm trickles down to the players.

>Bosses do not have set HP
This is fine (I often use this when an enemy is a hair's breadth from death anyway), but HP is valuable as a deciding factor in enemy decision-making. Smart, wimpy enemies would consider fleeing, etc.

I drink heavily and then start writing bullshit. When I become sober again, I edit that bullshit until it is somewhat presentable.

My players think I am actually a good writer because they manage to fill all the plotholes with their own bullshit while I just bluff my way through and pretend that it was my intent all along.

Nope. GM fiat is a powerful tool and should be exploited, but never to the point where the players realise you're doing it.

As long as you don't let them see behind the curtain, everything is okay.

Okay, not OP but what I can gather from what you guys are saying is that I shouldn't plan adventures but just build npcs, places, items, and then improv adventures? Should I preplan encounters for dungeons and make dungeon maps and the like or just go with whatever happens during the session.

Also, what about boss fights? Do you preplan those or do you wing those on the spot? I can improvise explanations and story points quite well, but making up creatures and stat blocks and complicated mechanics is another thing...

>As long as you don't let them see behind the curtain, everything is okay.
It's okay, but it necessarily limits the narrative to what the GM thinks should happen.
Wonderful things can happen when you roll with the unexpected.
If the boss is far tougher than anyone imagined and the party only survived by a fluke, what could that mean for the rest of the campaign?
If the boss crumbled like tissue paper, everyone must ask why.
Was he all bluster? If so, how did hold power?
Were the PCs just that strong?
Had something or someone weakened him?
What could have happened?
Answering those questions can propel your game in new awesome directions.
You can run a game where each session can lead anywhere and its as much of an adventure for you as it is for your players.
Or, you can run a game that's okay.
Either's fine.

But the important thing is to make sure that the players are having fun, obviously.
Great frustration or disappointment should generally be avoided.

>I shouldn't plan adventures but just build npcs, places, items, and then improv adventures? Should I preplan encounters for dungeons and make dungeon maps and the like or just go with whatever happens during the session.
I jot down a plan for the campaign.
Literally a few lines to form an outline.
Then I very loosely plan the first session.
Then I, yeah, just go with whatever happens during the session.
I only ever use usually the first half of the plan and some of the maps.
Then, after the session, I adjust the outline based on the events of the session, develop a light plan for the next session, and repeat.
It's good to have a default plan to get them going and remind them of their objectives, and using an outline keeps the adventure from just being a sprawling pointless mess.
But heavy plot planning is waste of effort and rigidly sticking to anything is a bad idea.

I plan maps and dungeons heavily, but that's mainly just for fun.
>mfw they realise that they have no reason to explore the rest of the dungeon and just leave it unexplored
Heh

>what about boss fights? Do you preplan those or do you wing those on the spot?
I stat out a boss npc with a general idea of what they do.
I leave starting the fight up to the PC actions.

>I can improvise explanations and story points quite well, but making up creatures and stat blocks and complicated mechanics is another thing
Stat a list of types of enemies your players might encounter in the session, then use one of them, refluffed, as needed.
Unless they are raiding a menagerie, there shouldn't be that wide of a range of enemies per session.
If the party randomly hops in a boat for nautical fun, either use the ogre stats you have to run mer-ogres(or whatever) or just take a break for a few minutes to look up sea beast stats.

I'm good at coming up with ideas, but shit at putting pen to paper. I go into a session with next to nothing written down, the most I usually have is a world map which just shows where everything is relative to each other. The only thing you really need is a quest hook and that doesn't have to be written down. It might help to have one or two characters (more like personalities you can transplant on to anyone you want to be important.) but anyone they meet can be easily be made up on the spot based on context and in the worst case scenario you can just steal an existing character you are familiar with and alter it for your purposes. Player decisions and dice rolls do all the rest of the writing for me, I just have to improv the bits in between.

Once a session is done, I'll write down everything that happened: who the group met, what they did, etc. By this point I usually have a pretty good idea of what they will do next so I can make a couple hooks based of that, create some characters based on the hooks, fill in the blanks on the characters they already met, and then connect the dots so that all the new stuff can fit in with all the old stuff. My players still think I am some sort of master storyteller who had everything planned out from the beginning, never realizing it only works because I do all of my writing retroactively.

Yeah, the unexpected can put interesting twists into a campaign. I expected my campaign to have an elf necromancer as the "final boss" but the party killed him (before I had expected them to), but also REALLY pissed off a werewolf who ambushed them after the fight and took the necromancer's power, becoming the new main antagonist. I expected him to be just a side character.

This is why I don't plan too far ahead anymore.

How do you guys explain combat? I think that's what I have the hardest time doing. If I just go "You hit the goblin for 8 damage with your longsword" it sounds too video game'y and I fear my PC's get forced out of combat RP, but at the same time giving a long detailed description of how you chop the goblins arm off and it growls back at you covered in green blood seems boring to my PC's. I dunno what to do desu, I've experimented with it but it usually ends up in "you deal X damage, Y dies"

man, the unexpected is my favourite part of my current campaign. I don't think my DM expected me to cut off the water then start a fire in the goblin village, and I certainly didn't think about the implications, and one of the best fights so far was the result of a random encounter roll(2e Ghouls were HARDCORE).

never say how much damage they do. Describe it. If it's a goblin, describe where they cut the goblin, describe how it dies(1d8+1 hp? Good luck surviving a hit), if they miss AC don't have them flat miss, have the goblin dodge or block with a desperately thrown up shield, describe enemies who miss them as hitting their armour and shields, give them something visceral, and, if your players are down for it, grab a locational damage chart and roll on it any time a crit gets rolled, and give them a serious wound there. Hand? Cuts off three fingers. Leg? Slices down to bone, causing a horribly bleeding wound, which, when healed, scars horribly, leading to a slight(purely flavour) limp. Scars and injuries make combat feel more real.

This, the campaign I'm running has been complete and total asspull. My players tell me this is the most fun they've ever had.

EZ sandbox method:

Make a whole load of countries with a small amount of detail (a few cities, what they worship, population, what sort of government, imports and exports). Make sure they link with other countries (at war, at peace, allies, trading partners).

Make 6 factions, each one with a goal and an enemy.


Get the factions offering jobs to players, see which hook they bite.

Do some fetch quests, have enemy faction become the bad guys, flesh them out and add a big boss.

If players do very well as they proceed up the ranks, have either the enemy faction destroyed by an even more powerful enemy, or have their friendly faction destroyed by someone seeing them doing too well.

The players then need to pick up the pieces.

Feel like the campaign is going on too long and railroad it to completion in an epic battle against the big bad, wrap it up.

>How do you guys explain combat?
Short descriptive explanation of hit/miss and damage.
Short.
Descriptive.

>You x the y in/across/on/at the z.
Sometimes it is dynamic and exciting, sometimes it is business as usual.
Mix it up.
You're probably overthinking it.

>eyond that you're gonna fall to pieces in less than an hour when the players do something you didn't expect.
quantum
ogres

>quantum
>ogres
Ain't nothin' wrong wit that!

I tend to just use waves of 1hp minions to fiat my bosses. I tend to pick minions that are shit but have things like paralysing touch. I throw a few in and keep throwing them in until the boss is dead or the party is bloodied.
I use 1 hp minions because it makes the head math so much easier - only have to follow a couple of health pools rather than armies. I did some encounters with loads of mixed mobs for my party and I kept fucking things up.