Zardnaar
Legend
Part 1 is here.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?639605-How-To-D-amp-D-(DMing)
In part one I threw around some basic ideas on how to world build or put together a basic campaign. In part 2 I will share some tips on how to construct an adventure. In general a DMs best friend for any edition of D&D is a word processor and a printer. In the good old days I used to use note paper, A4 blank paper and grid paper that you would use at high school mathematics. Either approach works. IN D&D there are generally 3 pillars of play- combat, exploration and social (roleplaying). The 5E classes have been designed around these 3 pillars obviously some classes are going to be better at some of the pillars than others. If you have classes like Druids, Barbarians and Rangers things lean towards the exploration pillar, charisma based class and things like Rogues they can lean towards the social pillar while fighters and invokers lean towards the combat side of things. All the D&D classes to some extent are good at combat in various ways (spells, beat down, support etc) some classes are just better than others.
In part 1 I used Wycliff as an example, it as just really a name it could be Hommlet, Threshold, Phandelver, Shadowdale it doesn't matter what your name is (The Rock). The village is more or less a D&D cliche. Wycliff IIRC comes from the old Sword of Vermillion RPG from the early 90's I reuse obscure things that my players will not recognise. This is another example of KISS. Cliches can be good you can always met in an Inn especially if you are new as it would not have been done to death. D&D villages often have a forest nearby along with a dungeon. Village (social), dungeon (combat), forest/wilderness (exploration). Note you can also mix the 3 pillars, explore the village (exploration), interact with its inhabitants (social), head to the dungeon (combat), map the dungeon *exploration), and interact with its denziens or any NPCs you rescue (social). There is no right and wrong mix of the 3 pillars its more or less what your players like. D&D is kind of the most important one I suppose as a lot of players expect it and often when you are new to D&D you focus on that and that is fine as well. Personally I like the exploration part more followed by combat and social in last ( 40/30/30 mix something like that).
At its most basic detail a small forest or wilderness area and have 6-12 encounters/locations. Not all of these need to be combat and one or 2 of the locations can be a dungeon. Finding the dungeon is an old D&D trope (Caves of Chaos, The moat house, under the Temple of Elemental Evil). For low level PCs (1-3 or so) keep the dungeons small especially at level 1 you only need 6-12 rooms (note the 6-12 encounter thing KISS). Roughly divide a dungeon into 1/3rds. One in 3 rooms has the potential for combat, 1 in 3 rooms is empty, 1 in 3 rooms has something to do in it (hidden treasure, door, trap, puzzle etc). Empty rooms can have clues in them like tracks, pained arrows, chalk marks, murals, statues, etc. Try not to over do statue type monsters (Gargoyles, stone golems etc). If you over do that PCs won't trust any statues, a similar logic applies to traps on statues if any of them have gem eyes etc. IN a small dungeon perhaps as many as 50% of the rooms can have combat in them (a 6 room mini dungeon).
In the wilderness you can use a wandering monster table, don;'t worry to much if some of the monsters can overwhelm the PCs. Not every encounter has to be deadly or combat. Sentient beings can be negotiated with, animals can run of they get wounded once, and things like Dragons can just shake the PCs down for treasure. Level 3 PCs encountering a random adult Dragon, give them an option of paying half their loot, the Dragon can become a recurring BBEG. Friendly Druids, Dryads, mischievous fey are other non combat encounters you can include along with landmarks. Landmarks can be an ancient stone inscribed with runes/writing (these exist IRL), an enchanted fountain, ruins, a hill or mountains, a spur of stone etc. Look out your window for ideas.
For the social thing in pt 1 KISS I mentioned include a small list (6-12 that number yet again) of NPCs. Some D&D adventures have every building in a town with NPCs in it, that is great but it is a lot of work players often ignore around half of them anyway. 12-24 locations with 1-3 NPCs that is a full time job writing. And if the PCs decide to leave town you just did a lot of work for nothing. You can also include a few NPCs that can turn up anyway (and often will), its kind of like railroading but the players have the illusion of doing what they want. I practice it doesn't really matter where they go or what they do they will encounter XYZ NPC if its important to your story. Just don';t over do it or have NPCs turn up in silly places (merman in a desert). Give NPCs a few words to describe them or bullet points, plan out a rough dialogue in your head you do not need to write a short novel like some adventures do. KISS.
Putting it All together.
You are the DM and your PCs are level 1-3. Using my previous example you have "The Village" all so know as Ye Olde D&D trope. IN part 1 I mentioned several factions.
The Old Faith
Knights of Vanya
Zeon's church
Sol and Luna's church
You need a dungeon and want to do a little bit of the 3 pillars. 6-12 is a nice golden number. Design a small dungeon and place it somewhere probably in or near the woods. Tie the Dungeon to the campaign. Its a ruined keep of the Knights of Vanya that was destroyed a few decades ago. Tie the forest to the factions as well, around half the villages follow the Old Faith so you have a couple of Druids in the forest. Sol and Luna can be a married couple make them a faction the Church of light that is opposed by Zeons church. Each on has an NPC priest and an acolyte (1 noble and a common) these are all NPCs from the back of the MM.
There is an old Knight who perhaps was a young one when the Keep fell. Of course he has a magic sword or shield (+1) that he is willing to donate to some heroes and he might even have a family. His children/grandchildren can be potential love interests to the PCs so we can give him a granddaughter/son who has had some combat training (NPC guard stats) and with a bit of training could turn into a level 1 Fighter/Paladin or even Ranger. The grandchild is also a prime candidate to get kidnapped.
We need a villain as well. A wandering Bard can be a servant of Zeon and they have corrupted a villager. The villager may be redeemable (led astray) but the Zeonite is a real bastard.
Cast so far (name them)
Priest of Sol
Priest of Luna
Druid
Old Knight
Old Knights Grandchild
Zeons "Bard"
Corrupted villager.
Throw in another 4-6 villagers as red herrings or whatever just to expand the cast. Reasons Bard hangs out at the local tavern and often has his acolyte turn up in the evenings to drink. The "Bard" is cahrsnatic (14+) but can be of any class or NPC from the back probably no more than CR 1-3 depending on when the PCs are expected to smack them down.
So we have a rough plot line of a ruined keep/manor that used to belong to the Knights of Vanya. This is dungeon number 1 for the PCs to go and explore and it is fairly close (a few miles no more can even be in the town on the edge of it).
The Dungeon can be 6-12 rooms, the "Bard" perhaps has animated the fallen defenders as skeletons throw in some typical fodder (goblins, kobolds). The Knight of Vanya wants the PCs to recover something sentimental form the ruins and is willing to reward them with his magic item. The evil "Bard" can be interacted with peacefully in town but of course will sneak out to the ruins perhaps he is ordering the skeletons to excavate a room/hole which conveniently has what the old Knight is looking for.
And that is basically it. There is a bit you can do with this very basic outline and we do not need to write a novel detailing the local area. In part 3 if there is any interest I will talk about how to dress up the basic adventure and follow it up. Note this is only IMHO, you may do it differently.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?639605-How-To-D-amp-D-(DMing)
In part one I threw around some basic ideas on how to world build or put together a basic campaign. In part 2 I will share some tips on how to construct an adventure. In general a DMs best friend for any edition of D&D is a word processor and a printer. In the good old days I used to use note paper, A4 blank paper and grid paper that you would use at high school mathematics. Either approach works. IN D&D there are generally 3 pillars of play- combat, exploration and social (roleplaying). The 5E classes have been designed around these 3 pillars obviously some classes are going to be better at some of the pillars than others. If you have classes like Druids, Barbarians and Rangers things lean towards the exploration pillar, charisma based class and things like Rogues they can lean towards the social pillar while fighters and invokers lean towards the combat side of things. All the D&D classes to some extent are good at combat in various ways (spells, beat down, support etc) some classes are just better than others.
In part 1 I used Wycliff as an example, it as just really a name it could be Hommlet, Threshold, Phandelver, Shadowdale it doesn't matter what your name is (The Rock). The village is more or less a D&D cliche. Wycliff IIRC comes from the old Sword of Vermillion RPG from the early 90's I reuse obscure things that my players will not recognise. This is another example of KISS. Cliches can be good you can always met in an Inn especially if you are new as it would not have been done to death. D&D villages often have a forest nearby along with a dungeon. Village (social), dungeon (combat), forest/wilderness (exploration). Note you can also mix the 3 pillars, explore the village (exploration), interact with its inhabitants (social), head to the dungeon (combat), map the dungeon *exploration), and interact with its denziens or any NPCs you rescue (social). There is no right and wrong mix of the 3 pillars its more or less what your players like. D&D is kind of the most important one I suppose as a lot of players expect it and often when you are new to D&D you focus on that and that is fine as well. Personally I like the exploration part more followed by combat and social in last ( 40/30/30 mix something like that).
At its most basic detail a small forest or wilderness area and have 6-12 encounters/locations. Not all of these need to be combat and one or 2 of the locations can be a dungeon. Finding the dungeon is an old D&D trope (Caves of Chaos, The moat house, under the Temple of Elemental Evil). For low level PCs (1-3 or so) keep the dungeons small especially at level 1 you only need 6-12 rooms (note the 6-12 encounter thing KISS). Roughly divide a dungeon into 1/3rds. One in 3 rooms has the potential for combat, 1 in 3 rooms is empty, 1 in 3 rooms has something to do in it (hidden treasure, door, trap, puzzle etc). Empty rooms can have clues in them like tracks, pained arrows, chalk marks, murals, statues, etc. Try not to over do statue type monsters (Gargoyles, stone golems etc). If you over do that PCs won't trust any statues, a similar logic applies to traps on statues if any of them have gem eyes etc. IN a small dungeon perhaps as many as 50% of the rooms can have combat in them (a 6 room mini dungeon).
In the wilderness you can use a wandering monster table, don;'t worry to much if some of the monsters can overwhelm the PCs. Not every encounter has to be deadly or combat. Sentient beings can be negotiated with, animals can run of they get wounded once, and things like Dragons can just shake the PCs down for treasure. Level 3 PCs encountering a random adult Dragon, give them an option of paying half their loot, the Dragon can become a recurring BBEG. Friendly Druids, Dryads, mischievous fey are other non combat encounters you can include along with landmarks. Landmarks can be an ancient stone inscribed with runes/writing (these exist IRL), an enchanted fountain, ruins, a hill or mountains, a spur of stone etc. Look out your window for ideas.
For the social thing in pt 1 KISS I mentioned include a small list (6-12 that number yet again) of NPCs. Some D&D adventures have every building in a town with NPCs in it, that is great but it is a lot of work players often ignore around half of them anyway. 12-24 locations with 1-3 NPCs that is a full time job writing. And if the PCs decide to leave town you just did a lot of work for nothing. You can also include a few NPCs that can turn up anyway (and often will), its kind of like railroading but the players have the illusion of doing what they want. I practice it doesn't really matter where they go or what they do they will encounter XYZ NPC if its important to your story. Just don';t over do it or have NPCs turn up in silly places (merman in a desert). Give NPCs a few words to describe them or bullet points, plan out a rough dialogue in your head you do not need to write a short novel like some adventures do. KISS.
Putting it All together.
You are the DM and your PCs are level 1-3. Using my previous example you have "The Village" all so know as Ye Olde D&D trope. IN part 1 I mentioned several factions.
The Old Faith
Knights of Vanya
Zeon's church
Sol and Luna's church
You need a dungeon and want to do a little bit of the 3 pillars. 6-12 is a nice golden number. Design a small dungeon and place it somewhere probably in or near the woods. Tie the Dungeon to the campaign. Its a ruined keep of the Knights of Vanya that was destroyed a few decades ago. Tie the forest to the factions as well, around half the villages follow the Old Faith so you have a couple of Druids in the forest. Sol and Luna can be a married couple make them a faction the Church of light that is opposed by Zeons church. Each on has an NPC priest and an acolyte (1 noble and a common) these are all NPCs from the back of the MM.
There is an old Knight who perhaps was a young one when the Keep fell. Of course he has a magic sword or shield (+1) that he is willing to donate to some heroes and he might even have a family. His children/grandchildren can be potential love interests to the PCs so we can give him a granddaughter/son who has had some combat training (NPC guard stats) and with a bit of training could turn into a level 1 Fighter/Paladin or even Ranger. The grandchild is also a prime candidate to get kidnapped.
We need a villain as well. A wandering Bard can be a servant of Zeon and they have corrupted a villager. The villager may be redeemable (led astray) but the Zeonite is a real bastard.
Cast so far (name them)
Priest of Sol
Priest of Luna
Druid
Old Knight
Old Knights Grandchild
Zeons "Bard"
Corrupted villager.
Throw in another 4-6 villagers as red herrings or whatever just to expand the cast. Reasons Bard hangs out at the local tavern and often has his acolyte turn up in the evenings to drink. The "Bard" is cahrsnatic (14+) but can be of any class or NPC from the back probably no more than CR 1-3 depending on when the PCs are expected to smack them down.
So we have a rough plot line of a ruined keep/manor that used to belong to the Knights of Vanya. This is dungeon number 1 for the PCs to go and explore and it is fairly close (a few miles no more can even be in the town on the edge of it).
The Dungeon can be 6-12 rooms, the "Bard" perhaps has animated the fallen defenders as skeletons throw in some typical fodder (goblins, kobolds). The Knight of Vanya wants the PCs to recover something sentimental form the ruins and is willing to reward them with his magic item. The evil "Bard" can be interacted with peacefully in town but of course will sneak out to the ruins perhaps he is ordering the skeletons to excavate a room/hole which conveniently has what the old Knight is looking for.
And that is basically it. There is a bit you can do with this very basic outline and we do not need to write a novel detailing the local area. In part 3 if there is any interest I will talk about how to dress up the basic adventure and follow it up. Note this is only IMHO, you may do it differently.
