I'm going to be running my first D&D game for some friends in a week. I've played Vampire, Shadowrun, and Exalted

I'm going to be running my first D&D game for some friends in a week. I've played Vampire, Shadowrun, and Exalted.

Is there any advice I should keep in mind when designing dungeons and stuff?

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Hey fag, what fucking edition?

5th.

One guy wanted 2nd, but we figured that stepping that far back would be an issue.

Think about what the dungeon's for:

Why did you chose to include a dungeon in the story? Is it just for the exploration and combat?

Why is this dungeon here in the world? Is it a natural cave? Is it a converted mine? Did someone dig it out as a fortress?

Who made this place? Who's living here now? What are they using it for?

For example, if you just need something to hang a series of dice rolls on, then there's not a lot to worry about. You could randomly generate one of those, and people often do. Or maybe it's the prison underneath an old fortress or castle, so it's got lots of small rooms to serve as cells and a larger area to serve as guard barracks. Maybe it's a dwarven mine, so it's smooth and well hewn, with expansive rooms and elaborate living quarters.

If there are people living there, they're going to have living people concerns. By which I mean there's a place where food goes in and a place where food goes out, and assuming they're not cavemen both places will be far apart and fairly specialized.

All right. Good info. Thanks.

One thing to always keep in mind is the people in the dungeon, how they move around in it and interact with it. A dungeon, regardless of its origin, should be traversable by whoever's taken up residence there. In-universe, it wouldn't make sense for a dragon to be living in a dwarf mine unless the mine had lots of large, open areas. It wouldn't make sense for kobolds to take up roost in a beholder's lair unless they were willing to build elevators and ladders to accommodate the 3D layout. And out-of-universe, it's necessary for players to be able to move around in it as well. Going back to the Beholder option, don't tell your players "You should have bought scrolls of flying, bro." when they arrive in the Kobold roost and find that it's a pit straight down into the ground.

A dungeon, really any part of the D&D experience, should make sense both as a place that something is living in (otherwise it's just a cave) and as a scenario for players to be able to meaningfully interact with (otherwise it might as well be a box that bad guys come out of).

Look at your players' skills, or more broadly at the skills list in general, and think about how you would use each skill to navigate through a space. That's a good way to build an interesting dungeon. Climb along the fractured wall until you get to the waterfall, swing across to the underground river, and swim down that until you get to the portcullis. That sort of thing.

So tailor it for both the monsters and the party. I think I can handle that.

If you're playing 5e, don't disregard the DM's guide. It's got a really simple process you can follow for constructing your first few dungeons, and by the time you've exhausted the ideas there, you should be in a good position to start incorporating your own ideas.

2eboi was the only sane man in the group, I fear.

How so?

WOTC's editions (3.5 onwards, including 5e) are tarnished by an excess of mechanics and rules, """""balance""""" that only seems to break the game further, and gamification of the system.

To put it more clearly, 5e is what an MMORPG player thinks D&D is like: choose your class, make your build, roll this skill, choose that feat. TSR's editions (1e and 2e Advanced D&D, and all those Basic/Expert variants) are the roleplaying game that someone who has just finished reading an epic fantasy novel would want to play: explore the tomb, solve the puzzle, figure out how to bypass the trap, convince the troll not to eat you, gather an army and build a stronghold.

If you want to know more, asks the dudes at /osrg/. 2e is not commonly considered OSR, but it is fundamentally identical to 1e, and only slightly different to B/X.

Also:
To be fair, 5e is the least bad of WoTC's edition. It retains too many of 3.5's problems but not many of its strengths, and the things it fixed it was through making the game more boring. Plus, a sizeable part of what they've released for it is regurgitated directly from TSR, which tickles me in a funny spot. They seem reticent to do cool things with D&D, which has saved them from failing terribly, but also doesn't let them do cool things. Despite this, they are endlessy succesful commercially.

I tried to make 5e work for me, but it just didn't, both as a player and a DM. The worst part was when I played a Purple Dragon Knight alongside my friend's fae warlock. While I could only slightly heal myself or attack twice once per short rest, my friend had cool spells, innate abilities and a good ranged attack.

TSR's editions are much more simple, too, which is also great for beginners. Homebrewing / Ruling on the fly is much easier when there aren't many moving parts in the system that can break. For example, "tricks", "maneuvers" or "stunts" are easily solved through attack rolls, saving throws, or ability checks, or simply the effect being automatic/a tradeoff - and anyone can attempt them, because there's not that much scaling.

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((Before anybody comes calling, YES, you can do stunts in 5e. But it's that much harder to mantain "balance", because you could be rendering somebody's power/feat/ability moot by letting someone do this cool thing; or on the contrary you could make cool things too weak to even be worth attempting))

>ask for advise about running 5e
>immediate edition wars
God has it always been this bad or am I just noticing it now?

Also I think this big of a wall of text is a bannable offense.

Dont be a realismfag, let martials do cool shit

My advice would be to decide what kind of game you want to run. What flavor should it have. Think about your players, it seems you know them. Create it with them in mind and what they would like to do.

Then have fun with it.

go home wotcposter

Implement things that won't be found
Have some unexplained magic artifacts with wierd effects
Actually hide the treasure
Have some non-hostile beings in the dungeon (ghosts, prisoners, etc)
Try to make your dungeon a bit "alive", with different factions that can interact, for example you could hire one to attack the other as a distraction. Negotiating as an option is always good.
Make combat interesting : it's always best to fight in the middle of a collapsing room or while a wall of fire is closing up on you than on flat ground. Fighting in a room full of traps will be much more stressful for the players.

People that are effectively illiterate should be banned from life desu

It's not a war until someone starts firing shots user. So, I guess you have only yourself to blame.

Like another people are saying. 5e is very Structured when it comes to classes and players that come from a video game background become more concerned with thier gear and stats and minmaxing over actually role-playing but thats nothing a good dm can't solve. 2e is my favorite aswell but the rules get a little too rough. 5e is my second favorite edition tho

if simpler iis better, why not go 1E?

>Is there any advice I should keep in mind when designing dungeons and stuff?

Don't bother designing any dungeons until you've played the game for a while.

The PDF Share thread has links to thousands of dungeons you can use. Download a bunch, use them, and get some idea of what it's all about before trying your hand at designing your own.

OP, don't listen to this person.

2e is actually simpler than 1e, because it streamlines many of its mechanics, and it has better writing/formatting (however, it also loses the Gygaxian prose, which while unpractical, it is a great read. 1e's books are well worth reading as inspiration)

go home wotcposter

I'll take my chance and ask here then instead of making a new thread.

I wanna try my hand at DM'ing as well, and I've been playing Pathfinder for a while now, I'd hardly call myself knowledgeable about the system though.

Should I stick to Pathfinder or get on 5e to introduce my friends to D&D? any other advise to minimize my fuck ups would be appreciated as well.

>Pathfinder
No.

Any edition of D&D is a better RPG than Pathfinder/3.5
As I've stated previously I prefer the earlier editions (AD&D and B/X), but 5e is decent for a starter.

I would use Pathfinder, 3.5 or 4th editions to introduce people to the hobby. Try simpler systems first.

I would suggest 5ed, 2ed Basic, or my favorite "Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea"

>I would't use Pathfinder, 3.5 or 4th editions

if your players want something more complex later on you can always introduce new game system.

but I think simpler systems works better. More ability to improvise, you don't waste time of pointless rules-lawyer arguments and combat is fast and fun instead of 5 minutes for each player to make his turn.

Your points seem to contradict each other. On one hand you say that the extra mechanics and rules are bad, but you say that everything before 3.5 is simpler and less rule heavy.
If the rules for 2nd were as simple as "choose your class, make your build, roll this skill, choose that feat," that would be a god send. the further back you go, the more you have to think about your character build/stats/skills/rules etc. There are specifics for each race/class/weapons that force you to create a build in order to figure out if you are allowed to play it. I get that you understand these things and are omitting them, but for everyone else i suggest a quick glimpse just to compare.
What would you recommend for a power gamer that wants a crunch heavy game that makes him think about his choices. What about a player that doesnt care about any of that, but wants to play a game similar to an epic fantasy novel he just read? Also uh... you have to choose a class and roll skills in these editions. I'm really not sure why you are comparing rules to playstyles.